COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:30 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR., CO-CHAIR COUNCILMAN JAMES KENNEY, CO-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN FRANK DiCICCO COUNCILMAN WILLIAM K. GREENLEE COUNCILMAN BRIAN J. O'NEILL COUNCILWOMAN BLONDELL REYNOLDS BROWN RESOLUTION 100515 - Resolution authorizing City Council's Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment to hold hearings on the economic and environmental impacts that hydraulic drilling of Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region. - - - 2
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. We apologize for starting a little late. We wanted to give people a chance to get through security that came from far and near to participate in this hearing. We're going to get started. The City Council's Joint Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment is now in a public hearing to listen to testimony on Resolution No. 100515. In attendance, my Co-Chairman, Councilman Jim Kenney, and my colleague, Councilman Brian O'Neill. A special good morning to those who are listening on radio, WHYY, and thank you for being interested in this very important hearing. Will the Clerk please read the title of the resolution.
A resolution 23 authorizing City Council's Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment to hold 3 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 hearings on the economic and environmental impacts that hydraulic drilling of Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region.
Thank you. I want to give some brief remarks, because we have an ambitious, to say the least, group of people that want to weigh in on this important matter. So in that regard, I will be brief. I wanted to say that recently I received an award, and it was the eco-champion on some matters, but I wanted to tell folk that any one of the members of this Committee, on this Council, could have easily received that award. My colleague, Councilman Jim Kenney, has welcomed a freshman to the fight and has championed many, many causes that are of concern to our environment, and I wanted to thank my colleagues for attending today. What we hope to do today is to review the facts, dispel the myths and to 4 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 create the best public policy which is in the interest of all Philadelphia. I am not necessarily a long-term environmentalist. I have a lot of titles. One of them is Chairman of this Committee, but the one that I care most about is Grandfather, and what we do today will determine the quality of water in Philadelphia for my grandchildren. We want to take a look at the Marcellus Shale gas reserves and to look at how those important resources are ferreted from the earth. I want to look at fracking today. Natural gas is recognized as a cleaner burning substitute to petroleum fields, if it is safely extracted. It could lessen our dependency on foreign oil. All of Philadelphia's drinking water, however, and 50 percent of it coming from the Schuylkill River, comes up under the Marcellus Shale interest. If something happens and it is determined that an explosion or some mishap happens 5 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and it drills through rock, our drinking water is in peril, not just Philadelphia but all of the surrounding communities that come from and contribute to the Delaware River Basin. We want to take a look at this. We understand that on the other side of the issue this cheaper form of energy could create jobs and revenues to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and many people wanted to know, Well, why is Philadelphia interested? Because we have to remind people sometimes that Philadelphia is a part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and that this Committee is very concerned about what goes on on the western end of the state because of its impact to our drinking water. So we want to raise the issue, is it more important to do public policy before you do public study, and that's what this hearing is to determine. We know that the Marcellus 6 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Shale has been around for close to 400 million years and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that if we -- (Applause.)
Thank you. And that if we take a moment to preserve one of our most important resources, our water, we can avoid what happened in the Gulf. I know that if they could turn the clock back, they would have had this hearing, a similar hearing, and been a little more judicious in their study. So with that, will the Clerk read the first panel that will testify.
Just briefly. I would like to thank both Chairmen, you and Councilman Kenney, for bringing this issue to the forefront and not as a taxation issue, which is all I 7 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and most people have read about, is whether the tax and how much, not whether to do or what to do about it if you're going to do it. I think this record that will be developed here today will be groundbreaking, to use a play on words, with people looking for more information of a scientific and environmental nature when dealing with this issue rather than just is this the golden goose. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you very much. I will remind people that we will accept written testimony, so feel free to abbreviate if you want or elaborate if you must, but you still have five minutes to do all of that. All right? Thank you. Would you read the first group of people ready to testify.
Dr. David Velinsky, 8 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Dr. Joseph P. Martin, Dr. Michel C. Boufadel. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this crucial issue. I am Dr. David Velinsky and I am the Vice-President for Environmental Research at the Academy of Natural Sciences. The Academy is Philadelphia's natural history museum and has done pioneering research for over 60 years on human impacts on the environment. I direct an interdisciplinary team of scientists and technical staff that focuses on ecological processes and environmental health of natural systems, particularly waterways, watersheds and estuaries. My colleagues, Dr. Boufadel and Dr. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 drilling on the Marcellus Shale to discuss its potential impacts on the environment. I commend the Council for asking Temple University, Drexel University and the Academy to speak at this hearing. Our institutions are one of Philadelphia's important scientific resources, and we are pleased to apply our scientific capabilities to a topic of critical interest to our city and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As our institutions propose to collaborate, Temple University and myself, on further studying the Marcellus Shale, it is appropriate that we are co-presenters, Dr. Boufadel and myself, today. Today I'm going to start with some of the basic science of the Marcellus Shale and the natural gas deposited within it, touch on the drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, and then look at some potential impacts of drilling practice on the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Finally, I will discuss some preliminary research that has been conducted on these impacts and briefly indicate that further research we feel is necessary to resolve a variety of uncertainties that remain. Dr. Boufadel's testimony will focus on the hydro-geology of drilling and potential below-ground impacts. I would also note that the Academy of Natural Sciences does not take a position on the overall advantages or disadvantages of obtaining gas from the Marcellus Shale. We recognize the enormous potential of this resource for both possible economic benefit to the Commonwealth and as an energy source with reduced greenhouse emissions. As environmental scientists, our role is to outline the potential changes to our ecosystem from this process and to point out the relative levels of uncertainty and risk. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 York to West Virginia and lies about a mile or more underground at various places. That's about the distance from City Hall to the Art Museum. As you can see from this map, a significant portion of the Marcellus is located under Pennsylvania, particularly along the Susquehanna Basin and to a lesser extent the Delaware. What is actually the Marcellus Shale? Technically a shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock formed from various types of mud deposited into ancient river bottoms, lagoons or even on the continental shelf. The Marcellus Shale was formed about, as you noted, 300 to 400 million years ago in an enclosed sea that once covered part of Pennsylvania. Microscopic algae produced from the surface waters were deposited in the bottom of the ancient sea that had low oxygen, and then they were eventually covered over with other types of sediments. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the organic-rich sediment degraded over time, forming the organic-rich shale. This process needed the right temperature, pressure and time for methane to form and to remain. The gas is now imbedded in tiny pore spaces within the shale. I would like to point out just from the panel next to that that the Marcellus is only one of many classes of shale that were formed by these ancient geological processes. As you can see from the diagram, in this region there are shales that lie above it and below the Marcellus, and some of them also contain gas. However, until recently, it was not believed that most of the shale gas could be effectively utilized.
Many shale gas deposits have low permeability; that is to say, it is trapped between the grains of the rock and doesn't have enough pressure to be withdrawn by simply boring a well into it. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 advances in drilling, specifically horizontal drilling, combined with the older technique of hydraulic fracking have now provided a means for economically accessing this gas. The method is quite simple. Wells are drilled down to the level of the Marcellus, roughly a couple miles or a mile or so, and the drilling tool is turned horizontally into the shale and then proceeds about a couple miles into the shale. The well is then secured and explosives are introduced into the bottom portion of the horizontal well, and these explosives fracture part of the Marcellus Shale or other types of shale. At this point, water, a few million gallons, is pumped down with chemical and physical additives to open up much more of the shale to allow the gas to escape into the open spaces. The gas then flows through the fractures and is withdrawn through the vertical shaft. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 representatives of the gas and drilling companies to explain any further details or to clarify anything I've missed on the process. The questions we are considering are the potential environmental impacts of the gas drilling. In terms of the overall impacts, as these photos show, gas drilling is an industrial process. There is a footprint of the well pad itself, the extraction and transportation of water to be used for fracturing, the disposal of fracturing water once it has been used, potential impacts on surface and groundwater, and the attendant issues that come from land use changes and fragmentation. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to the larger gas network. I would like to point out that while hydraulic fracturing and its relationship to water quality has gotten a lot of attention, we need to think about whether there are specific impacts on water quality and quantity, but we also have to look at the larger impacts on the natural resources and natural services, such as water filtration, that are provided by existing ecological systems. I will discuss this latter concept known as ecosystem services in a few moments. On average, about three million gallons of water -- and just to put it into a conceptual nature, that's about four to five Olympic-sized swimming pools -- three million gallons of water used for each well. The effect of this practice on water quantity quite simply depends on where the water is coming from. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 not have a measurable impact on the flow of the river, but three million gallons of water withdrawn from a small upland waterway or maybe a private or public well would have an impact on the local water and its biological diversity of the streams. Also, a number of substances are added to the fracking water to increase its effectiveness in obtaining the gas. These substances include lubricants to reduce friction, biocides and scale inhibitors to prevent bacterial growth, and coarse substances like sand to assist in the fracturing. None of these, for the most part, are found naturally in waterways. While best practices are that none of the fracking water will ever be released to the environment, the level of risk in using these substances must be assessed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of salts and leaching of the shale, add a number of substances from the underground environment to the water that is withdrawn. As a result, the withdrawn fracking water has very high levels of total dissolved solids, higher in some cases than seawater. High total dissolved solids can be a serious impairment to water quality and fresh water systems. As this slide shows, the amount of various dissolved materials in the fracking water exceeds by many orders of magnitude that found in typical river water. Do each of these elements result in a biological impact is the question.
A recent EPA report suggests that the amount of dissolved solids that results in the biological impact is much lower than what is found in the frack water itself. Is this a potential impact to the environment? Again, it depends on how the water is handled and where it is disposed of. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 million gallons of fracturing water to the Delaware at Penn's Landing or below would probably have a small effect on the river as a whole. Three million gallons of water spilled into a first- or second-order stream would have a profound impact on the local aquatic system. It should be noted that there is no economic treatment for high TDS other than dilution or an energy-intensive process like reverse osmosis. In other words, at some point, the water will have to be introduced into a larger waterway or injected into deep wells. So to summarize, there are several potential sources of environmental impacts from the gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. First, water withdrawn could have an impact locally on the quantity of water available. Second, there could be impacts on water quality. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of withdrawn water or other as yet poorly understood processes, and I think Dr. Boufadel will address some of these potential impacts to the groundwater movement and quality. The third area of potential impact is habitat and land fragmentation. This issue is not directly related to the fracturing, but may be the most significant and least considered of the potential problems. Fragmentation of the land surface is simply the reduction in the amount of forest cover and natural open spaces, breaking it up into smaller fragments, and a loss of connectivity between these fragments. In other words, reducing the amount of space available for organisms and interrupting or blocking important ecological processes within the area. The effects of habitat fragmentation due to human alterations of the landscape have been studied for many years and are well understood. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that there are critical sizes of contiguous natural systems that must be present for diverse populations of organisms to function, and we know that these sizes and diversities of organisms are necessary for ecological processes to occur. The latter function, ecological processes, is something called ecological services, because they represent a variety of potentially costly services that human societies get for free from the natural ecosystem. We preserve natural ecosystems because human societies depends on them directly, whether it is for water filtration, air quality or fertile soil. )
The combined effect of habitat fragmentation and potential release of fracturing water into natural systems could have significant impacts on aquatic ecosystem services. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Academy scientists, in collaboration with other local institutions, has shown that headwater forested streams provide the greatest filtration capacity for nutrient removal. Changes in TDS, total dissolved solids, can be toxic both on a chronic and acute scale to aquatic organisms, reducing the size of the biological community and ultimately impacting human needs such as fishery and water quality. In summary, both loss of forest area and introduction of dissolved solids can reduce or impair ecosystem services in small watersheds such as those in the Upper Delaware. In particular, removal of nutrients, a major environmental stressor in agricultural landscapes, can be impaired for fragmentation by changes of biological structure within the watershed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 activities, nor do we know if there is a cumulative impact of drilling activities and, in particular, possible exposure to water with elevated dissolved solids on the ecosystem services of a small watershed. One of the ways we measure ecological functions is to look at certain key chemical indicators and the abundance of certain types of organisms. Testing the electrical conductivity of a waterway is a good way of assessing total dissolved solids and is a good view proxy for human-caused disturbances. There are also certain organisms, notably amphibians, salamanders, and particular orders of insects that are highly sensitive to degraded waters and contaminated environments. By sampling watersheds for these measures, we are able to get an approximation -- to approximate the relative health of the watershed and the ecosystem services which are capable. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 To at least get preliminary assessment of the cumulative impact of drilling, Academy scientists have been working with a University of Pennsylvania graduate student to collect data on water chemistry and indicator organisms. Let me emphasize that this data is very tentative and would require further review and replication, but it does suggest that the impact of drilling may directly be connected to the density of drilling within a watershed. As you can you see from this figure, the conductivity in a high-density watershed with a lot of drilling activity is much higher, as well as the insects, what they call the EPT, indicators of healthy macro-verter (ph), which is lower, as well as the number of salamanders in this watershed are lower, showing the impact proposally of the drilling within the watershed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 research can be seen in the graphs. For each of the measures, there was significant differences between the high-density drilling locations and the locations with no or low-density drilling. This suggests that there is indeed a threshold at which drilling, regardless of how it's practiced, will have a significant impact on the ecosystem. Conversely, it also suggests that there may be lower density of drilling at which ecological impact cannot be detected. With this initial data, while I emphasize remains tentative -- and I emphasize remains tentative, we are proposing a comprehensive research plan to the state DEP in the Growing Greener program, which would develop guidelines and assessment tools for regulators and managers to minimize the ecological impact of drilling. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to better understand the interaction between well density, size of the impacted stream and watershed, and the resulting ecological indicators. We propose to look at multiple streams with varying amounts of drilling and to use a computer-based model to analyze the impact of drilling on deforestation and fragmentation. In conclusion, I would like to thank the Council for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
We believe that gas in the Marcellus Shale may have positive effects on the Pennsylvania economy and there may be possible ways to extract it safely. At this time, however, there remains significant uncertainties, and we urge a cumulative impact assessment on the scale described above before large-scale drilling is undertaken. Thank you very much. )
For interest 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of time, we're going to allow each of the folk to testify on the panel before we ask questions. I do need to recognize for the record that Councilman Frank DiCicco and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown have joined the panel. Would you like to say anything?
Will our next panelist begin and read your name into the record and begin your testimony, please.
Sure. Dr. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 engineer, professor at Drexel University, speaking pretty much on my own interest of my evaluation of the situation, not representing any particular entity. What I'll do is, I'll work the opposite side. I'll kind of tell you what will happen if things go right. In the world of engineering, we decide what is going to go right and where we figure out inspection procedures to assure that. I'm originally in the construction business, and we all know about that, is you expect what you inspect. And so this is what could happen. I want to make a story. We're here at the City Council. So the City Council deals in the big picture. I want to be looking at the big picture to say this is an opportunity that we should not pass up. I will make the point that it is in nobody's interest at all for the wells to leak or the things to spill. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Nobody at all. And I'll finish up a little bit of discussion on how the wells are sealed to assure the people. As a background, hydro-fracking has been around about 50, 60 years. It's in thousands and thousands of wells. The point of the practice is to increase the permeability of vertical wells. Fairly recently, down in Texas, they developed a way to marry that practice, hydro-fracking, with directional drilling. What this made, it made possible, to expound my earlier speaker, to exploit the gas in the actual source material. To date, we have extracted gas from sandstone reservoirs to which the gas migrated. Now we're going to the source. With this technology available, it changes everything and you start to see possibility of years. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 two-thirds of the state, there are up to three or four such layers. So once we put in an infrastructure for the Marcellus Shale, it can be reused for these other layers as they go along. So we're looking at the usual world of geological exploration for fuels that the estimates keep going longer and longer, but we have ourselves a sea change and how to acquire it. Now, the big picture here is that the gas is used -- is as versatile as you can get. It's used for heat, PGW, for power, for generating electricity and for transportation. I want to tell you a little thing about the transportation by itself. The transportation effect of using natural gas as a fuel is that, A, it is cleaner burning, which has been discussed, but also generates less greenhouse gases per kilowatt of BTU than you want. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 warehouses where there are natural gas-powered forklifts. Can you imagine a warehouse where you had the forklifts powered by gasoline engines? So my point is made, that the impact of burning natural gas on the air or environment, which is always an issue in Philadelphia as well, is positive, have that being said. Now, to continue this, it turns out that we are running out of gas in the USA. So the sole alternative to provide gas, natural gas, to the citizens of the United States is liquefied natural gas imported. The proper word for this is OPEC No. 2. Many of the nations which have liquefied natural gas sales, including Siberia and Algeria, are not necessarily friendly to us. Trinidad certainly is. But the bottom line is, if we continue to exploit gas resources in Pennsylvania, the money stays in Pennsylvania. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 about local food. Well, this is local fuel. It comes from just to the west of us, parts of the state which are in trouble, and if some parts of the state are in trouble, the City is in trouble. This City is a center of the State of Pennsylvania. Councilman Jones, I appreciate your note there, but I tell that to people now and again, Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the country and unquestionably the center of Pennsylvania.
There are places like Lock Haven which have not had an industry since Piper Cub moved to Florida years ago. I was out there a couple 20 of weeks ago and there's activity. So let's not forget that there. Now, this comes directly to Philadelphia. It's a reliable source. Philadelphia made the decision long ago to make its basic heat for its homes is 32 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 PGW. So either we bring in the gas from Algeria or we bring it in from Centre County. That's what you got. The other thing it's going to be is clean burning. So what I mean out of that, besides being a shale, is to say, I'm an engineer. We have to make it work. That's the idea. There's one other element, that I understand that this is done in some manner at the behest of the PGW to preserve our watersheds. Well, this place we live in is called Penn's Woods. There is no better watershed protection you can imagine than forest. And when we get to the point about the natural gas extraction by the hydro-fracturing and -- not the hydro-fracturing per se, but the directional drilling, we are disturbing -- those pictures look like K-Mart. They are about the size of Daniel Boone's homestead. You use about five to six acres of clearing per square mile of 33 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 extraction. That is as low a disturbance as you can possibly get. I want you to compare this to coal and I want you to compare this to solar. So basically Marcellus Shale extraction by the directional drilling is probably the best forest preservation you can think of and that it's all good. (Audience yelling and booing.)
So the other element, before I get into a little bit of the detail here, is that the water -- first of all, I'm trying to tell you what happens if everything goes right. Okay? The water that is generated, the flow-back water, is very highly sealed, it's fossil water, as was pointed out. Much of it is used for recycling, and there is no easy way to get rid of it. One of the ways to get rid of the salt is to boil it. Well, we're talking about a gas well, so it might entirely be possible, necessary for the gas companies to divert some of their precious gas to 34 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 boil it down, evaporation. But the bottom line is, they cannot discharge it until it's right. So I don't mean to be arrogant in this regard, but the quality of the frack water is not the public's problem. It's the problem of the producer. They cannot discharge it -- (Audience booing.)
Wait a minute. One of the rules in this Chamber is, with my colleagues and sometimes with testimony, we can disagree agreeably, and what we will do is be respectful of people's opinions. We will refute them. We have a balance of testimony, and we're going to hear that. So I know this is an emotional issue for us all, but we're going to listen and be courteous.
We have a DEP. We have an EPA. We have a PWD. Either they're working or they're not. And so I would make a comparison that I had an 35 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 opportunity to visit the Yuengling brewery recently, and in between one vat and another is the water. They can't discharge that water until they cleaned it to the satisfaction of the City of Pottsville and the DEP, and that's all there is to it. Either we have laws or don't. So I'd just like to say that that's a serious issue, the frack water, but it is the issue that has to be solved by the industry. Either that or they're in violation. Now, the other element I want to be sitting here and saying, there's a lot of issues about not doing it right, and it's definitely true. This is an industrial operation, with thousands of wells. If it's not done carefully, things can happen wrong. I just want to close by showing a little technology. In order to get this gas from 7,000 feet down without any leaks, which is to the advantage of two people, the 36 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 gas company, which wants the gas that they generated to come up through that stem 7,000 feet and into their pipelines to sell, A, and, B, the landowners who get a royalty per cubic foot of gas coming through. They want all the gas that's freed down the Marcellus Shale to go up through that pipe, none of it leak into aquifers and so forth. The system that exists that is set up, there's public record on every well drilled in the state, to say is the first thing that they do is they drive a casing 30-inch diameter down through the soil. That's step one. Inside that casing they drill that out. Then they drive a 12-inch diameter casing down through all of the potential aquifers, typically 1,200 feet or something like that, in that order. It depends upon the local geology. Then in between the two casings, they pump concrete. So at that point, we have protection of two layers of steel. Now, either they have welded 37 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 those steel pieces together properly or not. Either they've threaded them or not. But at that point, we have two layers of steel, one layer of cement protecting the aquifer. Then inside of that is a third one, nine inches, which is driven down to the 7,000 feet production level, and so that's going to be sealed with cement in between. The purpose of that cement sealing and that pipe is to prevent leakage of brine and other things. This is sedimentary rock. There's usually layers between the 16 surface and the Marcellus Shale. Many 17 even include fossil water and so forth. 18 The drillers do not want to bother with 19 that. 20 So down to the level, mile and a half below ground surface, there are up to five layers of steel and cement sealing that inside from the outside. I submit to you that is a higher level of standard of sealing than we have 38 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 underneath hazardous waste sites and landfills, including the huge landfills in Falls Township that take Philadelphia's trash, and liners into those landfills protect our largest water intake at Torresdale. So it's a higher standard of protection. So I'm going to close by thanking the City Council for bringing this issue and by saying that this is a phenomenal opportunity. It's going to be a tremendous benefit to the citizens of the city and the state, and it has to actually be enforced. It's an industrial process. There's going to be thousands of feet to be drilled. Lots of things can go wrong, but it's not inherently a bad idea. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We're going to continue on. I need to recognize that my colleague Councilman Greenlee, Bill Greenlee, is here and has joined this panel. 39 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Would you like to make any comments?
We have one more panelist and then we'll open to questions and answers for this panel.
My name is Michel Boufadel. I'm the Professor of Environmental Engineering. I'm also the Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple University. I'm also Director of Center for Natural Resources Development and Protection, and our work focuses on large-scale contamination. We try to deal with contaminants on site, because it's in many cases very difficult to bring them to a particular facility to treatment. An example is the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We've been investigating it since 2007, and we have found out and we published the results why the oil still persists 20 years after the spill that 40 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 occurred 1989. Our staff also are involved in the Gulf spill. Regarding this issue, the Marcellus Shale, this is something that we getting involved in in terms of scientists recently. Last year there was talk by Carol Collier, the Executive Director of the DRBC, and I would like to thank her actually to kind of opening my eyes on this issue. And we start looking of what are the challenges dealing with the Marcellus Shale extraction. And as you see from my talk, you notice that one of the main issues was that there's a lack of data. So let's go ahead and start. I would like to acknowledge faculty at Temple University that helped me obtain some of the information, Dr. van Aken, Dr. Judy Zhang, and we have also fine graduate students that helped, and I'm also collaborating with Dr. Tom Graff from University of Hanover, Germany. 41 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 We start with what's called the Precautionary Principle. The Precautionary Principle states that when human activities may lead to morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm. That was agreed upon by the UNESCO, United Nation, and by various world organizations. The Precautionary Principle, the ground for it is not really a zero risk, because we do live in a world that has risk, but it should be based on some kind of acceptable level of risk. So with that in mind, we ask the question, Should the Precautionary Principle apply in the context of natural gas extraction? Is there any potential harm? Is there any potential harm at large? And my answer to that is yes, and -- (Applause.)
/ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 studies, risk impact studies. So as I said early on, when we start checking this issue, we found out that there's really a lacuna, a major lack of information, of objective studies conducted on the topic. There were anecdotal findings here and there. Lots of things were in the media, but really nothing that is published in scientific journals. And our goal for presentation today is to highlight the role of hydro-geology. We think actually the whole issue should be approached using a multi-pronged approach. For example, working with the Academy on the ecological assessment due to their superior expertise in that area, and there could be also air pollution investigation, but I think for the City of Philadelphia, we focus on what happens in the ground and the potential pollution there. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 schematic of how the drilling operation takes place. The well is turned horizontally when it hits the Marcellus Shale layer at 8,000 feet below the surface, and then there's hydro-fracking. So you have that horizontal leg could be maybe 2,000 feet. So every 500 feet they are kind of bound together and then the hydro-fracking occurs. Water is pumped down at the pressure of 15,000 psi. The duration should be, depends, three, four hours, sometimes more. And during the operation, there is, from what we understood talking with the industry, that there is a major focus on ensuring that the fractures do not propagate outside the Marcellus Shale layer. That said, however, our question is, What if the gas escape? What if the fluid escape? And he will -- we consider one scenario. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 compounds. It contains compounds that affect the immune system. This is what's being injected in the ground. Some compounds are carcinogenic, others are mutagenic, and you have endocrine disruptors that affects actually the growth, especially of children. So -- and in addition, when the water goes down, it picks up with it additional hazardous chemicals such as arsenic and what's called non-naturally occurring radioactive matter. So there's a concern that if that water in any way reaches the surface or reaches the aquifers, which are maybe the top thousand feet of the ground. This is top view of the terrain in New York. You can see Lake Ontario there. The study was conducted for the State of New York, and we are just below it. It is just showing what they call the linemen. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the ground. So you could see from that that it's not really a smooth surface. It's not like putting that everything is smooth. So there are cracks and fractures and joints and faults in any geology. These are some of the pictures. Again, you have the citations published in Tectonophysics, 2002. You can see on the left, for example, there is a hammer put there for scale. So these are -- there are some fractures in the rock, and we think that these fractures could actually conduct fluids up to the surface, depending on the operation itself. You have the same pictures also on the right for a larger area. So these rocks, it's not like that happens only at the surface. These rocks extend -- the formation extends down to thousands of feet. So there is nothing to say that what's found at a thousand feet below the surface is different from what you see here. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 So, again, this is what the ideal situation, the fractures remain in the Marcellus Shale layer, which is maybe 200 feet thick, but let us consider a scenario. This is here where -- this is a simulation. This is not -- we didn't get these data from the field. We just assuming that there are fractures in the ground. You can see there's this horizontal bar at the bottom. This is about 7,500 feet below the surface. The dimensions are given in meter, so every thousand meter is 3,000 feet. So what we going to do now is, we're going to show a simulation where there's an injection and there is the cracks in the ground.
Essentially what could happen is that you will have an upward link or shooting of the injected fluid maybe 2,000 feet up or they could be to a distance of maybe 3,000 feet from the surface. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 injected, where they stay. I mean, we do know that they don't disappear. They are somewhere there in the ground. And based on the injection and the presence of fractures, there's tendency for them to go up and not down, and we think that could be one possible scenario. The problem is that we don't have these data. We don't have anything to tell us exactly how are the fractures in the ground. Now, what would make this situation more dire is that if you have refracking of the well. If someone comes and refrack the well again, that could bring these hazardous chemicals closer to the surface. And, finally, we need to know that water in the ground is not really stagnant. I mean, it moves slowly, but there's always an interest in understanding how long will it take to get from point A to point B. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 wells for deep-well injections for hazardous chemicals, they are required to explain or to predict the locations of any chemicals they put within 10,000 years. So any chemicals, when you're dealing with deep-well injections, any chemical that is injected in the ground, the company that is injecting it needs to explain what will happen to that chemical in 10,000 years. And these are very firm guidelines established by the EPA. So the long-term effects when dealing in groundwater, especially deep groundwater, has always been there. Here is another situation where you have -- as you remember, four million gallons are injected. One million gallon comes up.
This one -- no. 23 I don't remember. The source actually, it was conducted from New York, but I'm not sure of the actual -- 49 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Okay. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's from the Columbia University "Urban Design" study, and this is a picture of Northern Pennsylvania.
Northern Pennsylvania? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Where they store the flow-back.
Thank you. Could you repeat that so people listening on the radio can hear what she said?
Well, she's saying this is in Northern Pennsylvania that this fit. Okay. So this is a situation where you get -- after you inject the water to frack the formation, you get one-quarter of it back, and they are put in some situations in these open pits 50 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that they are lined and they go to keep them until the trucks, they get hauled off site. So I'm going to just focus your eyes on the bottom right. And then next slide. So this is the size of football field, and it's one or two feet deep. So the question here is, What happens if you have leakage from these pits? We need to know first that the brine in that pit is six times more concentrated than seawater. So it has lots of salts. And because of that, it's much heavier than fresh water. So it's not going to move with the fresh water. It's going to have a mind of its own. So you're going to have something like a lava lamp effect, and you will see it next. So this is an illustration of cross-section in an aquifer. In both cases, the top and the bottom, you are 51 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 assuming that you have leakage from the pit. There are these sticks sticking in the blue area on the top and the bottom panel. These are monitoring wells. Let's say they went down 30 feet or 50 feet. And the edge of the rectangle represent the bedrock so water doesn't go through it. And in this scenario, we assume the water moves from the left to the right. So once you have leakage, the idea that you put the monitoring wells downstream and you'll be able to capture that plume, but in this case, the top situation doesn't account for the density of the plume. The lower panel does, and that's what we think, you know, once you -- as the latest technology or latest science or latest models, to predict the behavior when you have spillage. So next slide.
Before you move, do I understand those that look like nails, those are sensors?
These are 52 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 sensors, yes.
And do I understand that because of the depth of the potential brine, it's right under it and it couldn't be detected?
So this is after ten years. After ten years, your sensor is telling you that there's a problem in the lower panel. After ten years, now there's a problem. By that time, your aquifer is completely contaminated. And then you continue, 12 years. Next one, 13 years here you can see on the right-hand side, the bottom panel. You have the water starts up-welling, and this is very natural. Water does move uphill. That's why we have springs. So it depends on the 53 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 pressure behind it. So then the water start then up-welling and then -- keep going, please. Next one we have situation now where we have the most -- the closest well or the monitoring sensor to the pit is contaminated, and the farthest one is contaminated, but the middle one is not. And now we start thinking that the neighbor to the right has some pollution problem and then it is spilling back to our yard. So the idea here is, we just need more science than we are usually dealing with when addressing Marcellus Shale issues. And then there's a tendency for the brines to stay much longer in the ground compared to other chemicals. This is just a movie of what I explained. So it does up-well. And imagine that you have the Delaware River or the Schuylkill River on the right, the bottom right. It will start seeping into 54 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 it over a very long duration. Here we predict it to be 200 years. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's not brine. It's sulfuric acid.
People will be given an opportunity to speak. I see enthusiasm, excitement in the audience, but we're going to follow our process and you'll get an opportunity.
Which leads us to the conclusions. So the groundwater containing hazardous chemicals could seep into the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers for a long duration. Dilution is going to be a big help, and those are the fact that Philadelphia is relatively at the large distance from where the main drilling activity taking place. There's about 100 mile, 150 miles, depending of how you measure it. One of the concerns, though, remains endocrine disruptors, because they are very potent even at low 55 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 concentration. Endocrine disruptors, they are like hormones. They have the ability to, for example, feminize male fish. So they could affect the environment in a drastic way. And although for maybe water treatment or drinking water treatment, I leave it up to the PWD to discuss how will they deal with that. And, again, the situation would be worse during low flows. I get a lot of data from the PWD, the Philadelphia Water Department, and we know that there are periods where the flow is maybe ten percent of the average. So those durations then, whatever is spilled there, it might not dilute as much to make it below the threshold. Our recommendations, I think we need to start thinking long term. The monitoring is good, but monitoring without deep understanding is going to tell us that in two years, three years, there will be no problems. As we fully 56 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know dealing with Superfund sites, dealing with oil spills, once things go into the ground, the time scale has to go up from months to years to tens of years to maybe hundred years. So as I mentioned early on, for deep-well injection, if one want to inject hazardous chemicals at 10,000 feet below the surface, they need to prove that these chemicals do not get anywhere in harm within the 10,000 years. So they need to know what happen for the next 10,000 years. (Applause.)
And the petition for a deep-well injection that was in 1991 study, the petition, the cost by the industry, the science needed or the engineering studies needed, it used to cost about 300,000. I think the permit for a well in Pennsylvania is maybe 2,500. So it used to take the EPA --
Could you repeat that, the fees. 57 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
The fees, about 300,000 for a deep-well injection. This is the study needed to submit a petition. But here if we want to get a license for a well, my understanding is about 2,500. And then -- the EPA, it used to take them one, full staff, one year to evaluate the permit or the petition, and I'm sure the DEP -- I don't think they have the staff to spend a year on each application, or person year. So I think that's why I say the deep-well injection should be relied upon. I'm not saying they should be enforced hundred percent, but they should be relied upon, because really the geologic information is key, and the assumption that whatever we inject there would never reach the surface is not sure. I mean, it behooves people who want to inject things in the ground to tell us or to assure us that they will never reach the surface. Thank you. 58 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 (Applause.)
Well, I want to recognize that we've been joined by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and wanted to know if any of our new Councilpersons wanted to make a statement at this point before we enter into questions. (No response.)
My first question is, let's talk about for a minute what we all agree on and what I heard out of the testimony so that folks out there can put their arms around the enormous size of this. Is this one of the largest finds in our nation?
Someone gave the analogy of OPEC. Is that correct? Like this find is like finding oil in 59 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Saudi Arabia?
More like Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 20, 40-year projection, not -- Saudi Arabia has got oil forever.
And can you speak into the mike, because people cannot --
The amount of oil that's in and around the Persian Gulf is orders of magnitude beyond anything anywhere else in the world. What we're talking about with the three or four layers of organic shale under the Allegheny Plateau is kind of on the order of the oil that was discovered in North Slope, Alaska. They got about 20, 18 years. It's starting to wind down and 19 going to the next place. 20 So it's a second tier, second 21 tier of -- the question was magnitude. 22 The magnitude is the second tier from 23 Saudi Arabia, but similar to Alaska, 24 similar to Beaumont, to Spindletop in 25 Texas. 60 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Well, in terms of -- I know that what we read, it says that it could support the U.S. for two years.
What I said, the amount is 500 trillion cubic feet of gas, and it is about years of supply. 15 Maybe I'm off on that one, but I think 16 it's -- there's 500 trillion cubic feet 17 of gas in the Marcellus that they think 18 is obtainable. They haven't actually 19 obtained it, so they don't really know. 20
And I know later on we're going to hear from the drillers, but we're going to make a lot of millionaires; is that correct? Is that right?
I didn't hear. 61 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
We are going to make a lot of people rich; is that correct?
We will not only make -- excuse me -- a lot of people rich, but we will restore the economy of ordinary people in the central PA.
Everybody gets paid, but the question becomes, are we taking the steps -- because it's not like the resources aren't there -- to do the proper planning and proper studying? 62 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 If we're talking about major reward, can we be a little cautious and deliberate in our planning of taking this resource from the earth and making sure that everybody -- it's a win-win scenario? Does everybody agree -- (Applause.)
Wait a minute. So everybody agrees that we should be taking all appropriate steps to make sure that we are safeguarded? So we do agree on those two principles?
Now, with that, there were some interesting charts 63 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and graphs, and you had some conclusions, but I did not see them in your -- and recommendations in your testimony. Was it in there?
All right. In your presentation from the Academy, Doctor, you mentioned what was in the actual solution that goes into the ground.
Of which, which ones of those chemicals concerns you most? Is it the salt? Is it --
I think it's the sum -- for me right now, just without going and knowing the biological impact 64 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of every individual chemical, it's the sum total, the total dissolved solids. It's 80,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved salts in the water compared to a background of maybe 100 to 200 milligrams per liter. So that if you were to take, for instance, even road salt, that kind of thing, and put it into a small stream, the various organisms would just go belly up.
So do we all agree -- and I'm trying to get on the things we do agree -- that those chemicals that were listed by you are in the solution that all of these 50 or so drillers use? Because I understand some people don't even list what the chemicals are because there's some patent protection.
The chemicals that I listed in my second chart were ones that came out of the frack water of sort of after dissolution or leaching of the shale. Those aren't in the solution 65 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that went down.
That's what came back. And the level of dissolved solids varies from one well to another. What I showed is maybe one well. It's not indicative of every single well.
So is there a uniform solution that all people that are drilling use?
They all put -- this is going for 50-year development of the practice. Given that, there are certain functions that the chemicals that they add provide, that they don't do it just to do it. They have a reason for doing it and they solve a problem. They have to put in some sort of biocide to keep -- we've injected air into there -- to keep bacteria from blocking the pores. They have to put in the sand to hold up the things. So probably I would imagine 66 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that most of the drillers put in the same mix, but they all have the same set of things they want to accomplish with the mix. So a possible scenario that I'm pretty sure all my colleagues would agree with me is do like surface industries have done, find ways to accomplish something with less toxic material. That would be a direction to go in.
I appreciate your comment, but my question is, is there a standard knowledge of what we are putting in the ground by driller to driller?
I think the gas company representative could answer that better, but from what I understand, each driller uses their own proprietary solution. They're all slightly different. Some contain the same chemical, the biocide, but they're all slightly different. I do not know exactly what all the little chemicals are that are put in. 67 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
And it depends on the drillers themselves. So you could have -- it's not on the company that is actually hiring the driller. But in terms of contaminants, there are endocrine disruptors. I think these are -- those should be major concern, because there are a small concentration. They are very important. I mean, they could enter into a stream and them feminize the male fish. And it's not like at one part per million or one part per billion. You could have one kind of drop in trillion and then they could be potent in the environment. So I think these are the things that for Philadelphia we should be maybe concerned about the most. There's no 22 doubt for quality of our water, I agree with Dr. Velinsky that these are solid. They're going to be affecting the streams far from here, and then eventually there 68 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 would be deterioration. But I think these particular compounds that are still -- that could be potent at very low concentrations should be top of our priority.
Even though they don't tell the public, do they tell someone, some regulatory agency, that this is what I'm putting in the ground so that you know?
Yes. It's on the well record that's filed at the DEP, that they have to list the materials they put in. They don't necessarily have to put in the concentrations. But that's in the public record for every well that's drilled.
We injected this, we injected that, we injected so many barrels of water, such-and-such a chemical mix and so forth. What is not fully disclosed -- some of them are 69 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 disclosing -- are the concentrations, but the contents are there.
Point of information, Mr. Chairman. For further -- in an attempt to further clarify your question, so are we hearing that there are no standard protocols, if you will, that the public is uniformly made aware of?
There are no protocols, one. And, two, the public is not uniformly made aware of whatever the substance they're getting at the end of the drill? Because I'm trying to climb this mountain in learning. 70 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
That's correct. And one of the things is that the drillers may say we're putting a chemical in and they give you the trade name, but they don't tell you the specific chemical. Is it ethylene glycol at five percent. Is it whatever chemical to -- a specific chemical. They tell you a generic name that they came up with.
I'll amend my statement to confirm with that. They are putting in what they're doing. It is not the specific chemical formula, and that may be behind a trade name. I correct my statement.
I agree. That is, to say the least, one of the things that we're going to pay particular attention to, some type of right to know and some type of uniformity among drillers. If you're talking about 50 71 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 different companies and 50 different soups, we need -- this Councilwoman right here did menu labeling on food. I think at least that on chemicals going into the earth might be something that we look at. I want to change gears a little bit and talk about the microorganisms, and I want to thank all of you for helping to make laypersons understand this process, because I want to make sure that -- there are three doctors there. I don't think there's an engineer or doctor here. So thank you for helping us to understand, but in my limited understanding, you're putting pressure into the ground to create and ferret the gases to rise to the top, and in that fracturing, you have what look like on some of your illustrations hundreds of cracks and crevices that this gas is lodged in between. What percentage of the extracted chemical actually comes back once you put it down? 72 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Almost none. The chemicals that are added are organic. I'm not --
Sure. The chemicals that are added are mostly organic materials, and so they're absorbed by the organic material. The return water issue is, as my colleagues have said, the natural fossil brine that's coming up. But the material that's injected in controlled amounts -- and I'm not trying to say I understand exactly what it is -- is all, from a scientific point of view, organic compounds, which are sorbed onto the organic shale.
Will the other panelists -- do you agree with that or is there a contrary point of view?
I mean, we don't have any data to indicate that they get absorbed to the shale layer. I think 73 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 usually when -- it's like passing water through your filter. If you pass it very slowly, yes, you could clean the water, but then if you pass it very fast, there's a chance that maybe half of the water will be cleaned, the other half is not. So we don't know really. I mean, we don't know how long the contact time between the injected water and the shale, and based on that, I doubt that most of it will be absorbed to the shale. (Applause.)
I think part of your question was how much water comes back. I think it's variable. I don't think all -- three million gallons go down. I don't think three million gallons come out right away. I think some of it stays down there. Some of it comes back slowly. Some of it comes back right away. As to the point of the organic chemicals, most of the ones that I do 74 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know of have what they call low partitioning to organics, to other organics. So they'll stay within the water. They will not partition to an organic matrix. They'll stay dissolved in the water. Like ethylene glycol, that will stay in dissolved.
I want to hit another topic of the microorganisms that are impacted by the solution, and from my daughter's point of view, who is an ergonomist, that these interactions between microorganisms are very important to the ecosystem. What does this do to that?
Well, I mean, basically -- I think getting to the point of some of the -- well, first off, the microorganisms are what produce the gas to begin with way back when. I don't 75 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know if that's what your question was.
And the second point is that if these -- now we're going up to the surface water. If some of these streams are impacted to where the total dissolved solids or specific chemicals hinder their growth, these microorganisms, you'll get less removal of nutrients from that stream system. Certain processes that -- these microorganisms need to have a nice good environment for them to process, let's say, nitrogen to remove it. Otherwise, you'll get this protection of that -- of the source water or the Upper Delaware will be reduced and you'll have to start treating the water down here more.
Yes. Councilwoman Brown. 76 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Let me thank you all for your extraordinary expertise and teaching us as we go down this road on what's going to be appropriate and correct at the end of the day. In the interest of full disclosure, I should state for the record that on March 25th of this year, I introduced a resolution calling on the Delaware River Basin Commission to halt the fracturing until we have a full environmental impact assessment. (Applause.)
What I am excited about is that Councilman Jones has actually taken this to the next level where we now dissect why we need to do this. (Applause.)
So with that said, I always want to look at lessons learned. When we look at the debacle, 77 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 travesty that we saw in the Gulf, what are the lessons learned as we look to plan and look forward with the proposals around Councilman Jones' resolution? What is the number one or two lessons learned? I'd like to hear from each of you.
I mean, to me I think what Dr. Boufadel had as his third slide on that Precautionary Principle, that's the lesson learned. I mean, we need to think -- there is this potential. We need to understand it, to get the scientific information and put the regulations and the programs in place that will limit any impact. We don't know all the impacts. We won't know for a while, but we need to plan as if there's going to be impacts so we can minimize those as best as possible.
I think -- I mean, surely I agree with what 78 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Dr. Velinsky said, but I also think in terms of studies, sometime we hear like there's the EPA study. So let's wait until that is done. There's also studies that is earmarked. I think we need to start studies now, and they don't have to be really grand. They don't have to be $5 million studies. The criminalist thing is the way we learn about things, we learn little by little. I mean, we don't take a kid until they are tenth grade and then we give them ten books and say, Okay, now go ahead and learn. We teach them little by little, and that's what we need to do. We need to learn as much as we can from anywhere. Some of the questions mentioned, for example, now, that could be dealt with within a month, and then we would know how much of the organics stay or don't stay and et cetera for other issues. So I feel like we need to 79 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 initiate studies immediately, and they don't have -- (Applause.)
And let me attempt to get clarity from your answer. When you say "we," who is "we"?
I mean, the community, anyone that is interested, anyone who is trying to understand what's happening, maybe the City of Philadelphia.
Including the industry. Actually, I mean -- because I deal with oil spills, I meet with many -- there are -- it's interesting, because the oil industry is always viewed in a certain way. However, the oil industry has put a lot of effort into preventing oil spills, and there are conferences organized by oil industries to deal with oil spills. I think we should have 80 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 something similar maybe by the gas industry where the scientists, not the policymakers, but the scientists share ideas and which is the better -- for the better of everyone.
What value might there be in a study where there's a collective set of stakeholders? Councilman Jones is suggesting university community, the industry, the environmentalists, citizens who have to cope with this at the end of this road versus one particular world. Because so typically, if it's one world, then the opposition world, those are hands down on it. What's your view or take on that?
Well, I think that's definitely the best way to go about it, to have studies that we have many stakeholders. There are sometimes advantages for having entities such as universities and Academy involved in 81 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 these studies, because the goal is, there's no liability. The EPA study most likely will -- we will hear nothing until it is done three years from now, whereas for studies conducted by any of us, you know, as far as we get data, we would just share them, because that's what we do.
Well, I think the university research is a wonderful thing, but the question you asked was BP versus Marcellus Shale. Let's go back over the BP thing. What went wrong? First, a horrible amount of arrogance to say that you could predict, project what you did at shallow levels to a mile and do no 20 tests of any form. Things failed under a mile deep that had never been tested anywhere close to that. So they basically dismissed the engineering community. This is what we do.
Who is 82 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 "they"?
BP. Second, the BP spill issue came about through contractual after UL fawns (ph) kind of stuff. BP said it owned it, these guys owned it. Nobody had responsibility. It was button, button, who got the button? The whole contractual responsibility, it took the Coast Guard a week to figure out who actually owned it. So that's a contractual thing, how you do things. Those two things made it all a disaster. Arrogance and doing something far beyond putting a man on the moon without ever sending up John Glenn for suborbital. That's essentially what they did. So these are not scientific. These are ordinary practice things, how you do. PWD scales up carefully from one system to another. Now, the problems that we've had in the Marcellus, including one was an explosion in Clearfield County, was 83 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 exactly the same, that nobody knew who was responsible. A bunch of amateurs came in and did this. It had nothing to do with science. It had something to do with contractual law and inspections into ordinary care stuff. So if you're going to connect BP and Marcellus, the situation, the reform -- much as I love scientific research, we're all brothers in this, the reform of how you're disclosing who is responsible for what, how you prove that what you've done, I will go back to my story that Marcellus Shale -- not Marcellus Shale; the hydro-fracking is 50 years old. In Texas, they developed the idea of the hydro-fracturing compared with the directional drilling. Lots of problems happened there. They figured them out. So what I'm trying to say is, the engineering capability to do this is there, but it's pretty obvious that nobody knows how the work is contracted 84 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 through subcontractors or something and we've already had one problem. But it's a smaller scale -- I don't mean to denigrate the people in Clearfield County -- of exactly what happened at BP. Keep in mind, remember when the spill happened, nobody knew who owned it. Nobody knew who was responsible.
Could I do a follow-up, please, sir, before you -- I'd be happy to hear from you. In your opening statement -- I'm trying to find the quote so I cannot misrepresent here -- you said -- your very opening statement. Do you remember what you said in your very opening statement?
I don't have a written one. I said if everything goes 85 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 right, this is what will happen.
If everything went right, this is the benefit. Real quick, if things go wrong, what would be your nightmare?
My nightmare would be the spill of frack liquid when it's being carried from a site to some sort of a treatment. People do get in accidents, trains do derail, things like that. The nightmare is nightmares. Everything is fairly controlled at the site if we fix these contractual issues. The state has monitors. Maybe they don't have enough, but the nightmare that I have is carrying a million gallons of frack water. When they finish an area to recycle it and it's too salty to deal with, it's being carried. Then we are dealing with a low-level variation of how do we move 86 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 nuclear waste casts in Nevada. That's my nightmare of a spill of salt water on the road.
All right. We're going to move along. I want to thank you all for your insights, and we will use them, as my colleague says, as lessons learned and recommendations taken. Would you, Clerk, introduce the next panel.
Kathryn Klaber, Marcellus Shale Coalition; Bernard Brunwasser, the Philadelphia Water Department; and Craig White, Philadelphia Gas Works. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you. We have two mikes for three people, so you can begin your testimony. Please read your name into the record. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the Joint Committees of Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment. I am Bernard Brunwasser, Philadelphia Water Commissioner, and I'm here to testify on Resolution 100515. I have some of my experts in the back, including Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Services, Howard Neukrug, and the Department's Director of Planning and Research, Dr. Christopher Crockett, and also Ms. Kelly Anderson, who is our Manager of Source Water Protection. They're all recognized experts in their field. I'm going to vary a bit from my written statements, which I believe you already have. Philadelphia Water Department's core mission is the provision of safe, high-quality drinking water to its nearly two million customers in the Philadelphia region. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 extends to the stewardship of our region's water resources. To this end, our department has closely followed the discussions surrounding natural gas drilling to better develop our understanding of the full range of land and water resource impacts drilling might have. We have been active, full partners in the Marcellus Shale discussion. Please do not mistake our rigorous scientific approach for nonchalance. We are pragmatic in our understanding that gas drilling, when done properly, can offer many economic and clean energy benefits. But we are also vigilant in our insistence that drilling is managed with all of the necessary regulations and oversight in place to protect our watershed environment. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Protection and the Delaware River Basin Commission have already put towards ensuring that natural gas extraction is both economically beneficial and environmentally responsible. The Water Department also greatly appreciates our environmental partners, including American Rivers, the Delaware Riverkeepers and a variety of public and educational institutions, that raise public awareness around drinking water issues. We embrace public engagement as an incredible opportunity and a teaching moment, particularly today, for all environmental challenges. As many of you are aware, the Water Department will be investing nearly $2 billion over the next years to 20 manage storm water as a natural resource 21 and to revitalize our precious rivers and 22 streams. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 providing access to safe drinking water for all. The Water Department has been a leader in watershed protection since the 1860s when the Fairmount Park System was formed to protect the Schuylkill River from pollution. Today, watershed protection is a core function of the Department, as we have championed regional watershed planning with our upstream municipalities and counties to develop a holistic plan that addresses water quality and quality of life for everyone in the Delaware and Schuylkill watersheds. We have completed drinking water protection plans that look at the chronic and acute impacts of such things as new development and redevelopment and the impact of clearing natural lands, acid mine drainage, aging sewer infrastructure, agricultural practices on water quality, volume demand in growing communities and utilities, accidents and spills involving hazardous material. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 do this every day. Natural gas drilling is just one more potential water quality challenge, albeit a very important one, that has been added to our watershed management strategy. I'd like to share just a few examples of the actions that the Water Department has taken or is currently engaged in to gain a better understanding of the potential impact of Marcellus Shale and to ensure that the appropriate protection measures are in place.
First, the Water Department has communicated and is in continual discussion with the EPA and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, or PADEP, concerning its water supply issues relating to Marcellus Shale drilling, particularly the disposal of wastewater and degradation of water quality due to land clearing and compaction of land. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Committee, which is discussing monitoring strategies to capture any effects of drilling, and we chair the DRBC's Toxics Advisory Committee. PWD, the Water Department, is currently maintaining and planning for the expansion of the Delaware Valley Early Warning System, a one-of-a-kind communication tool and spill response information and monitoring system developed by the Water Department for the Delaware River Basin. That's been in place since the middle of this decade. The Water Department is encouraging DRBC to require drill pad operators and all parties with permits relating to natural gas extraction and disposal to join and participate in the Delaware Valley Emergency Warning System. The PWD is developing partnerships with academic institutions to perform research surrounding Marcellus Shale drilling activities and water quality impacts. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 monitoring equipment at its Baxter Water Treatment Plant on the Delaware to track sodium chloride levels in the river, which may help indicate the impact of drilling wastewater. We are also evaluating how to monitor other shale-related parameters at the plant. Finally, we are participating in a Water Research Foundation workshop in October focusing on bringing together regional and national water suppliers, regulators and the scientific community to identify potential risk assessment projects associated with natural gas drilling. The workshop is intended to improve the understanding of, A, the potential risks of hydraulic fracturing and associated natural gas development activities to drinking water supplies, and, B, strategies for reducing or eliminating any such identified risks. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 our citizens to provide them with safe, top-quality drinking water and to protect and preserve the water resources of our region. That ends my informal testimony.
I'm sorry. Did you use "workshop"? Could you restate that for people who may have missed that, and when they can have audience participate in that. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: We are participating in a Water Research Foundation workshop in October focusing on bringing together regional and national water suppliers, regulators and the scientific community to identify potential risk assessment projects associated with natural gas drilling. The workshop is intended to improve the understanding of the potential risks of hydraulic fracturing and associated natural gas development activities to drinking water supplies, and strategies 95 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 for reducing or eliminating any such identified risks.
We would be interested -- it's nice for elected officials to have hearings like this. It informs the public. It is equally, if not more, important for practitioners like yourself to get together to give us that information. So I would like to make sure that we have a balance of people that are reviewing this and participating in that. So it's important to get that out to the public and those interest groups that might want to participate in that. We'll hold questions for you until we hear from the other panelists. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Sure.
It's just about good afternoon. Councilman Jones, members of Council, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. My name is Kathryn Klaber and I'm President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 MSC was formed in 2008 and has since grown to include more than 130 members representing the majority of companies now operating in the Marcellus. We are a young organization, vibrant and growing, a reflection of the growing recognition of the benefits, economic and environmental, that Marcellus brings to Pennsylvania's business and residents. The Marcellus Shale Coalition was founded to advocate the responsible development of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale geological formation in Pennsylvania and the enhancement of the Commonwealth's economy that can be realized by this clean-burning energy source. The members of the Coalition work with our partners across the Marcellus play to address issues with regulators, with government officials and the people of the Commonwealth about all aspects of producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 resources safely and responsibly for the benefit of Pennsylvanians. I welcome any chance to return here to Philadelphia where I started my career and family, living right down Market Street in Old City. When I worked in the environmental field at that time, not knowing where I would find myself more than a decade later, it was commonplace in the five-county Philadelphia area to look for opportunities to replace fuel oil with natural gas in order to meet our emission standards. I wrote those permit conditions, and companies applied them, even at a time when natural gas prices were high. Now that natural gas prices nationally are low and stable, a result of significant supply from shale gas development across the nation, the use of clean-burning natural gas becomes even more viable for a city like Philadelphia. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 today's hearing, I wanted to provide you with some details in my related background. While in college in central Pennsylvania, created a major that was not yet common on campuses, Environmental Science, and through my coursework and two summers of research funded through the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, gained an early appreciation of the critical importance of water quality in our Commonwealth. Spending the next ten years in the environmental field and around the nation, I obtained hands-on experience in permitting, designing and installing environmental treatment technologies for a wide range of industries. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 experiences formed the foundation and my passion for working in this place at this time in the development of the Marcellus Shale, and I'm privileged to be here and talk about this topic here today. The natural gas industry is bringing huge investment capital and the associated job creation to Pennsylvania. The Marcellus presents a very special opportunity for all of us in the Commonwealth, and we must take care to foster this development with modernized statutes in a competitive, secure, regulatory framework. We also must continue to keep public safety and environmental protection as the cornerstone of how we conduct business. With the industry's contribution of more than $1 billion in revenue to state and local governments this year alone, there is a lot riding on our collective deliberations and actions. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 State University researchers conducted for the industry last year. It projected more than eight billion in annual economic value and nearly 90,000 jobs created by Marcellus development to date. And whereas this macroeconomic assessment is important for many uses, it does not capture by, in and of itself, the hearts and minds of Pennsylvanians. 8 billion in fact was collected by landowners in Pennsylvania in 2008 alone.
It will take stories of family members and neighbors and good-paying jobs in the industry and its supplier companies. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 investments in Pennsylvania because of new business from Marcellus development. We spent some time out here with the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center working with their members to understand where the manufacturing opportunities are in this industry. There are firms growing in Philadelphia to serve our industry, environmental consulting firms, law firms, water management companies and pipeline firms. There are many benefits, including the cost of energy, the home heating benefits in the lower costs, the electricity, stable costs from gas and obviously the business costs when it's more stable to heat your business and to fire those processes the more competitive those businesses can be. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 environmental protection - well construction and hydraulic fracturing and the water management process. First, well construction. The development of a well -- and we heard this from the former panel -- and the associated casing and cementing of well bores is a critical process to both the economic viability of the $4 million investment that is being made per well as well as obviously the safety and the environmental protection. org, that shows that the technology that's used in a way that is very enlightening. Industry knows from drilling thousands of gas wells that the proper drilling casing and cementing is essential to secure both the maximum yield and protect the surrounding water tables. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 regulatory agency to determine and impose new regulations and best practices as it relates to well construction. This issue has recently been addressed in significant detail by the state's Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board of the DEP, and that group of regulators, industry representatives, academia and representatives of the public interest spent many hours and multiple sessions developing a sound approach to updating PA Code Chapter 78 covering the 14 construction of oil and gas wells. That 15 rule-making includes numerous 16 modifications regarding the drilling, 17 casing, cementing, testing, monitoring 18 and plugging of oil and gas wells to 19 enhance the protection of drinking water 20 supplies. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 construct and regulate natural gas wells. And the industry itself imposed implementation of the rules even before the effective date. An additional item of note about the Chapter 78 rules relates to the disclosure of chemicals used in the development process. 5 percent a mixture of other compounds. This information has been available to regulatory agencies, including the DEP and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, for years. But to make our operations even more transparent, operators will include information on their hydraulic fracturing chemicals to DEP under the new Chapter 78 rules in each well completion report. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 well. And this is yet another example of the fact that these chemicals in fact are not a secret, but have been and will continue to be available to regulators in the public in a more transparent way, which is certainly what the public demands and deserves. As you may know from an announcement made earlier this year by Governor Rendell, DEP will be hiring even more staff to help implement these rules. The Marcellus Shale Coalition issued a statement following that announcement earlier this year, and it stated this, in part: "The Marcellus Shale Coalition has consistently supported the hiring of additional DEP staff to monitor natural gas wells in the Commonwealth, as reflected in its proactive endorsement of permit fee increases in 2009 to add and train new inspectors. Our support continues with the announcement of an additional 68 DEP staff dedicated to the oil and gas program. /ENVIRONMENT - RES.
" The second topic relates to hydraulic fracturing and water management. This is another area where Pennsylvanians deserve to get the facts about water management for Marcellus Shale development. The actions of industry, the regulatory agencies and the legislature must be based upon these facts. Furthermore, we must all work together to make sure certain that we are responsive to the concerns of the public. The fact is that Pennsylvania's regulations governing the use and management of water needed to drill a Marcellus well are among the most stringent in the nation and ensure the protection of the Commonwealth's water resources. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 business is to go state to state and evaluate the effectiveness of oil and gas rules in state programs. Water withdrawals from streams and rivers must be approved, including the withdrawal location, the amount of water required, as well as detailed storage, treatment and management plans. The industry currently treats or recycles all of its flow-back water. Many operators have achieved 100 percent recycle, with an average across the industry of more than 60 percent. Recycling greatly reduces the amount of water that is treated and returned to the waterways of Pennsylvania and also reduces the amount of fresh water that is withdrawn. There are more than a dozen approved water treatment facilities available to treat flow-back water, with plans for additional capacity underway. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 investment in advanced flow-back water treatment capabilities and recycling technologies, and will continue to innovate in this important area for natural gas production and environmental protection. With respect to the disclosure of the components of the fracturing fluid and notwithstanding statements to the contrary, this information is available in multiple places, and would be glad to answer further questions on that from what the previous speakers had addressed. org, which has a lot of additional information on the topics today. The last thing that I wanted to address before concluding, is there methane in private water wells in Pennsylvania? Absolutely, and there has been for decades. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 we really need to evaluate. The cause is not Marcellus gas, but the naturally occurring methane that is so prevalent, especially in parts of the northern tier of our Commonwealth. How do we know that? 2 million private water wells in Pennsylvania are contaminated. We are one of the only states, if not the only state in the country, that does not have private water well standards, and I think that's an important step in conjunction with ever-more vigilant protections against spills by the industry, but I think that what we have to really look at is how those wells have become contaminated with methane. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 entering an area for operation have pre-existing contamination. This is a cause that is certainly worthy of our focus, and it is time for some honest debate about the cause of that methane in private water wells in Pennsylvania. In conclusion, I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to discuss these issues relating to the development in the Marcellus Shale. The MSC looks forward to continuing to work with the Council, our partners in Philadelphia on all the issues that will be key to responsible and prosperous development of this resource in the near future. This concludes my prepared comments.
Thank you. We appreciate your testimony. Would you stick around? We're going to ask the panel questions. Next. 111 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Good afternoon, Councilman and members of the Committee. My name is Craig White. I'm the Executive Vice-President and Acting Chief Operating Officer for the Philadelphia Gas Works. I have submitted written testimony. I'm not going to read that, but I would like to make a few brief comments. With respect to the issue at hand, Philadelphia Gas Works shares the concerns of the Delaware River Basin Commission, City Council and the public. We certainly want any of this type of activity done in a way that is in the public's best interest. I do want to clarify one point. The last panel chose to use the term "gas company." We are a local distribution company. Typically those individuals or those entities that are withdrawing gas or extracting gas are considered producers. So we are a local 112 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 distribution company. We have a network of over 6,000 miles of pipeline or pipes within the City of Philadelphia, and we serve 84 percent of the residential houses in the City of Philadelphia. The most important factor is that at the present time and for the last number of decades, we have purchased all of our supply from the Gulf Coast region. That's on shore, off shore, Texas, Louisiana. We do this purchasing under a least cost procurement requirement that's required not only by the state but also by the city ordinance for the purchase of gas supply, which is voted on by the City Council. We have not purchased gas directly from the Marcellus Shale or the Barnett or the Fayetteville or the Haynesville Shale deposits. And there are more than just the four that I named. The reason for that is, we have low cost interstate pipeline capacity on Texas Eastern and Transcontinental that allows 113 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 us to access the cheapest supply at the present time. But, as I said, we are under a least cost procurement requirement, and, of course, if the future led us to a point where we could deliver gas to Philadelphia from the Marcellus Shale at prices much cheaper than what we're paying now or cheaper than what we're paying now, we would look to do that. This is assuming that, of course, the Marcellus Shale is being delivered in an environmentally and correct manner.
Yes. At the present time, we purchase all of our supplies in the Gulf Coast region because of the fact that we can economically purchase that --
The second part of that is, at the present time, we do not 114 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 purchase any supplies, we have nothing under contract with any Marcellus producers, nor do we have any contracts that would deliver Marcellus gas in the future. Now, having said that, I would hope that the Committee would also understand that the network of interstate pipelines across this country is a spider web. The molecules that we purchase are not necessarily the molecules that we get delivered. The term we use is, you can't paint the molecules. So there may be Marcellus gas delivered into underground storage fields that we have under contract that eventually get delivered to Philadelphia, but the procurement process and who we are buying gas from at the present time, as I stated, these are Gulf Coast, on and off shore, Texas, Louisiana suppliers.
That concludes my remarks, and I'm here for any questions. 115 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Thank you, panel. Councilman Greenlee, I'm going to defer to you. You have not had any comments.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone. My question is really for Commissioner Brunwasser. Commissioner, today in the Inquirer, they talk about this issue and particularly in comparison to what New York City does as compared to Philadelphia, and there's sort of an intimation -- well, maybe more than intimation here -- by a couple quotes that Philadelphia isn't as proactive, if you will, as New York City, and I know there's some response in the article, but maybe for the record could you just discuss that briefly and say what the differences here are and do you feel comfortable you're doing as much, even in a different way. 116 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Sure. That's a good question. The way we handle our water supply is quite a bit different than New York. New York is the first draw on the Delaware River, and their water is basically pristine. It comes from the Catskill Mountains. And so New York over the years has not had to develop the kind of treatment facilities that we have here in Philadelphia. We have a tremendous amount of filtering of our water, which makes it one of the purest drinking waters in the country. New York has never had to filter their water because it came pristine. Since we are the last draw on the Delaware and we're at the bottom of this 13,000 square mile watershed, Philadelphia has had to develop a tremendous amount of skill and technical prowess in the treating of drinking water. You can see the next time 117 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 you're in the Municipal Services Building, in the basement of the Municipal Services Building, around the core of the building is a display of the history of Philadelphia water, and you can see how terrible the conditions of the rivers were at one time, particularly the Schuylkill, with coal residue getting into the river and turning the river virtually black. So we have a lot of experience, and we also have a great distance at this moment from Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale is approximately a minimum of 100 miles north of Philadelphia on the Delaware. So we have -- we don't have quite the concern that New York has. New York, without all of the filtering and all of the types of treatment that we have, would have a problem if this infiltrated.
But you feel those other protections take care of 118 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 this and, like you said, the distance from Philadelphia? Is that basically it? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Yes. I mean, we are fortunate. We are quite concerned about our neighbors to the north, and our concern -- and that's one of the reasons we're watching this. We're also, out of an abundance of caution, we have been very much involved in this situation and we, as I said, we have made all of our points known to the regulatory agencies, and they have been listening to us.
I appreciate that. Just one more quick question for Mr. White, if I could. I know you said you have not at this point dealt with Marcellus. Do you see a timeframe where you have to make a decision if you will or do you feel comfortable that there's no reason to rush into that?
Well, I think the economics of supply and demand are going 119 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to drive that. The price of Marcellus Shale gas to deliver to Philadelphia is not economical. There's no direct connection at this point in time. So to build new pipeline capacity is very expensive. The capacity that we have to the Gulf Coast is very cheap. So we have a tremendous advantage. Even with slightly more expensive Gulf Coast supply, we can actually have it delivered to Philadelphia at a more economical price than we could if we were to connect to some of the new proposed projects for pipelines.
We have the connection to the Gulf Coast. As far as the timeframe, I wouldn't even venture a guess. The pricing there, as I said, at the present time, it's higher, but it could move quickly.
Economics 120 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 always place a part, right?
Thank you, Mr. Greenlee. Couple of questions. And I agree that we have come a long way in our evolution by way of water treatment and probably are one of the best water departments in the nation. We've come a long way. For those of you who are not from Philly, the nickname of our water in Philly used to be Schuylkill Punch, but it's gotten so good that we've even bottled it at a time and tried to test the market for that, and maybe in the future do that, and the idea of this hearing is to keep it that way. We have had to evolve as a filtration entity, because we're downstream. Now, we've had some sidebars 121 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 about this, and I want to thank you also. Your resume from being in EPA gives me comfort, even if it's in the industrial side. At least you know your stuff. So I appreciate you being here. A couple of questions. Now, you talked about an EWS system, Early Warning System, that is a part of your department's natural course of business. So could you describe what that is for the public? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, it's something we were able to put into place around -- fully put into place, I guess, in 2005. So we've had it -- 2004, 2005. So we've had it around for about six years, and we currently have 50 organizations that belong to this. This is a secure communications and information-sharing system that we have on both the Schuylkill and the -- the Schuylkill watershed and also the lower Delaware watershed, and the 50 members are utilities and industries and 122 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 different organizations that we are hooked into through telephone communications and e-mail that when anything happens in that river that is of any consequence, everyone knows about it as quickly as possible.
Do I understand that to be the Delaware and the Schuylkill? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Both, yes.
What percentage of water do we derive from each river, and which of them, if not both of them, come up under or touch Marcellus Shale? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, let me go to the first question first. We derive about 60 percent of our drinking water from the Delaware, and that's all through the Baxter Water Plant, which is in the Torresdale section 24 of the City. That supports about 60 percent of our customers. 123 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 On the Schuylkill where we have two plants, Queen Lane and Belmont --
Belmont being in the Fourth District. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Yes, Fourth District. Those two plants split the other 40 percent of the production and distribution of drinking water. Now, Marcellus Shale, about 11 percent of the Schuylkill drinking water 12 that we get is under the Marcellus Shale 13 or in that area, and I believe about 50 14 percent or so of the Delaware sources are 15 under Marcellus Shale.
So if you combine the two, what percentage of our drinking water potentially or does come under Marcellus Shale? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: I guess it would be between 40 to 50 percent.
So that's significant. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Sure. 124 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
In your Early Warning Systems, could you describe for us how they, A, connect to other counties and how far does that go to the actual site of drilling of Marcellus Shale. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: I may turn this over to one of my experts, but I can tell you that about 280 miles of river are monitored by the Marcellus Shale, and over 7,000 miles of stream are monitored as well. Our watershed I think is approximately 13,000 square miles all together, the Delaware watershed, and about -- and more than half of that is covered by our EWS system.
Clarification: You said 50 percent of that is covered by the Early Warning System? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: About 7,000 square miles.
So what 125 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 percentage is not covered by the Early Warning System leading up to that Marcellus Shale? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, I'll be hazarding a guess, but I stand to be corrected by my staff. I suppose it's about 40 percent is not covered, 45 percent is not covered. And, again, this was -- this is under the Philadelphia Water Department's authority. We would love to see -- and one of the points that I think I made in my testimony, what we would love to see is for any potential driller, extractor of this natural gas to be forced to join us, forced to join this EWS, which would continue it all the way up through the Marcellus Shale area and make that part of the -- and they should also contribute to bolstering this system so we could have realtime monitoring in more places, more often and so forth. This is one of the things that Philadelphia would like to see as an outcome of the expansion of this 126 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 industry, that we all, all along the Delaware River, have the ability to see if anything is awry very quickly and so that we can take action, and we're happy here in Philadelphia to run that system.
Yes. In fact, one of our members, East Resources, last year did embark on a project contributing, I think it was, close to a million dollars to put in the Susquehanna River an in-place monitoring network. And so that is certainly within our recent history and something look forward to pursuing with you.
Okay. So that's a good thing. In that monitoring system, did you see the chart offered by Dr. Boufadel about how they monitor? Is our warning system similar or complementary to what he was illustrating? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: I 127 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 think I'll let Dr. Crockett answer that one.
Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, Councilwoman. My name is Dr. Christopher Crockett. I'm Director of Planning and Research. I'm also the inventor of the Early Warning System for the Delaware Valley. The Delaware Valley Early Warning System was developed prior to 9/11, the concept, and we finally received funding to develop it after 9/11. And it's a secure system that is one of the most advanced in the world that provides instant telephone, web-based and water quality monitoring information for emergency responders, regulatory agencies, et cetera, to communicate about water quality events on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. Currently, the coverage of that system includes realtime monitoring as 128 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 far up as Easton on the Delaware River and pretty much the whole length of the Schuylkill River. The watershed coverage for event notification for Philadelphia where someone would call, such as a regulator at DEP if they found out about a spill or accident or Pennsylvania emergency response, would reach up to the state boundaries of the upper boundary of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There's only a short distance between that upper boundary and where New York City's water supply starts. And so there's a gap, but in terms of the gaps in coverage, we would definitely like to see this system enhanced so that we can expand the monitoring and make sure that anybody that's doing anything upstream is involved and aware and can utilize that system to warn us.
One of the things that I learned quickly being the Councilman from the Fourth District was 129 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the area of my district which is Manayunk which gets flooded from time to time. There was a warning system put in place so that upstream if they had what is called a rain event, it foretold possible flooding in our area, because the rainwater runoff and all of that compiles at the end of the day in my district. So that type of system has helped prepare merchants and residents to know when to evacuate or when something bad was coming downstream. To the degree that that gap exists in the warning system, what does that mean by way of realtime to react to different potential threats?
Well, for example, I'll give you an example. Back in 2005 on the Delaware River, we actually had a large P&L lake --
A lagoon or a lake. PP&L is Pennsylvania Power and 130 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Light.
They had a power facility that stored fly ash waste in a lagoon/lake along the river. The stop logs failed and a large amount of fly ash, laden with arsenic, went into the Delaware River over 100 miles upstream Philadelphia in the middle of the night. We were notified immediately when the state knew about that. We were able to get equipment and people upstream and monitor the rivers. The City of Easton actually had to shut down their intake for a period of time, and there was about a mile of river on the Delaware that was gray. Though it did not make the news here, our people were out there protecting, getting data, getting feedback and making sure that nothing was coming to Philadelphia to its water supply immediately upon that call, and this was over 100 miles upstream. 131 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 These kinds of things are what we prepare for at the Early Warning System, and we would like to make sure that, one, that people are aware of it that are doing the drilling and have that phone number to call if there's an accident and they know how to utilize it; two, that in the gap above Easton, that there would be some more monitoring equipment, as mentioned by the other speaker, so that we could have data to see if the water quality is changing rapidly or not. So if there is an event, sometimes you may not know an event happened until the water quality monitoring data tells you, because nobody knew it happened.
Again, one of the outcomes of this hearing is to take recommendations like that and present it to the appropriate authorities, both at the state, the monitoring levels, and the industry to try to, to the degree that we can, put 132 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 safeguards in place. So that's important. What I'd like to do is give you a list of chemicals. No, don't go anywhere. You're doing real well. And I want you to look at this list of chemicals that are used in the process of fracking and to tell me, do we currently test for any of these chemicals.
Okay. You're giving me a long list, but I'll tell you that the Water Department, if you check your consumer confidence reports that we have online for the City of Philadelphia, we basically put up on that website in our consumer confidence report, which we also mail out to all the customers, a list of all the chemicals that we test for and the concentrations found in drinking water, as well as we discuss what's in our rivers and streams. We can take this list back and compare that and we can get back to you, but a number of these compounds, though 133 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 some of them are very specific, they do roll up into general other compounds that we would pick up in our monitoring. Not necessarily realtime. Some of these pieces of equipment that's used for some of these highly organic chemicals that would be in manufacturing, we would be testing on more of a weekly or daily basis, not on a realtime basis, because that equipment is not necessarily ready for prime time out there.
So one of the recommendations you will make to this panel after reviewing this list is to see if, A, currently do we test for these things.
Yes. And we've actually taken a similar list like this and sent it to the Delaware River Basin Commission, and as Chair of the Toxics Advisory Committee, I've charged the Delaware River Basin Commission and our partners at EPA and different states to look at this list as well in our Toxics 134 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Standard Committee meeting in October to go over if there are any gaps in the current standards for surface water and drinking water related to what's reported in the discharges.
The second part of this is, the Water Department, meaning you, did an excellent hearing to discuss what -- after, I believe it was, a newspaper article that talked about the percentage of particles and chemicals and compounds that were found still in our water after treatment. And what we discovered was some of that arguably wasn't as -- and you did percentage by one-billionth particle of this or that, but I want that compared to what is ingest possibly by humans that could be harmful based on this list of chemicals specifically. Okay?
And we are looking at that list. I'm not only a Water Department employee, I'm a customer, and I have two small children 135 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that drink this water, my wife. And the thousands of employees that work for the Water Department who do this view themselves as vanguards of public health to make sure that their drinking water is safe, and we're taking a very serious look at these.
That inspires confidence, because I'm on the Schuylkill side, so I drink that water. So I'm very, very concerned. Let me -- any questions?
I would like to do a follow-up to the question around the list of testing of chemicals, and it goes to a question I raised before about protocols and SOP, standard operating procedures. Is it reasonable to think then as we look down the road of this very 136 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 vigorous planning we expect to do on the subject at hand that this type of protocol could be one that is incorporated in the process? Any one of the Philadelphia Water Department officials. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, I do remember addressing this body on the potential of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, and I guess part of that is what you are referring to now. The issue with Philadelphia was in parts per billion, we did not find these chemicals, but since we are a leader in the field and we took part with some of the researchers in the water industry and started measuring, not ourselves but sending to special laboratories, samples of our drinking water that were measured in parts per trillion, which is one thousand times stronger than parts per billion, and we did find 17 chemicals in our drinking water and -- but in such minute 137 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 quantities that you would -- you couldn't physically drink enough water for as many years as you needed to to even come up with a single dose of some of these pharmaceutical drugs. So there's no immediate concern, but it's good that the nation is looking at this ability now scientifically to measure it, such unbelievable measurement, that better to start to think about these things and start to bring procedures in that will help us as a nation to avoid these types of -- any types of problems from pharmaceuticals or any of these other types of chemicals that we find that we know could be harmful to us.
I'd like to go to the industry. You heard a lot of the comments and criticisms and concerns, and a couple of them I'd like you to specifically address. One of them was 138 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that there was no standardization. How many members do you have currently?
About 43 are midstream or producer members and the remaining are associate members.
And what concerns me is that the actual composition of chemicals. There is not a standard knowledge of what levels of concentration of each of those chemicals is in each individual brew, if you would, that goes into the earth and ferrets out the gas. Why is that?
Well, over time those products have been developed by different companies, serving the same purpose, but just like one law firm may market itself as an expert in this area because of a particular expertise, one 139 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 company might market itself to a drilling company saying that their biocide works even better. So over time, those certainly would have nuances, but the basic underlying purpose of having any chemicals in that hydraulic fracturing fluid is to serve a very targeted, specific purpose. There's economic reasons to keep anything to a minimum that's not the water and the sand, the two least expensive parts of the fluid. We've certainly seen both economic and environmental benefits of recycling that water, and when that occurs, there is extensive testing that's done. And the protocol you mentioned is the same in any other industry that is regulated by safety and health organizations. I mean, we have to have on site the products that are being used and in their purest form, which is much more concentrated on those material safety data sheets than you would ever see in the fluid either being 140 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 injected or withdrawn.
Well, I'm looking at this list. Have you seen this list of chemicals that --
Not this particular one, but certainly the source of this data was the industry.
There's at least 50 varying types of chemicals that go from acids to some, just as a layperson, pretty scary stuff, and one is more dangerous than the other, and to know the amounts and concentrations seems to me the kind of information that if I was living next door to drilling I'd want to know. And so is there a reason why we cannot through the EPA monitor how much each driller puts in of this?
Well, there is no 21 reason, and in my testimony I mentioned the changes to Chapter 78 that were put forth by the Department of Environmental Protection, and the industry certainly sees benefits to that, meaning that each 141 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 individual well, the well report that is submitted per well -- not overall, not a whole stack of MSDS's delivered to the agency -- that that will be part of the regular well report. That information is available online at DEP's eFACTS system. It's a very transparent web portal for all sorts of information, not just on the natural gas industry, but for every single permitted source, from dry cleaners to electric utility plants and everything in between.
So if I understood what you said correctly, every well will list for the neighbor downstream the amount and blend of chemicals that were used to do fracking?
First of all, when you say "neighbor downstream," I think it's important to recognize that as the previous panel discussed, these compounds are being contained either through this recycling that I discussed and/or treatment at permitted facilities that 142 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 have the kind of monitoring like we heard from Philadelphia's water authority. So the design and the day-to-day operations of this industry doesn't result in any downstream of -- downstream neighbor of this, because it's a self-contained process. But to your point -- (People yelling.)
In other words, when you're doing 100 percent recycle, of which many of our companies have been achieved and it's been a major innovation that is being noted by regulators and others around the country as to how far this recycling has happened in Pennsylvania, when that happens, it is a closed-loop system. Do we know what's being put into these wells? Absolutely, and that will be available in even more venues than it already is.
I'm glad you don't live in my district, because you sound a little bit political to me. I'm 143 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 going to ask the question again. I got the fact that you take every precaution through your casings to attempt to contain this, but as we saw in the Gulf, things break, things happen. And what my question to you specifically is, will we be able to, in a transparent manner, know what's in the soup?
Absolutely. And when you go on to any website, first responders know this. You know how to go right to the folder, electronic and hard copy, of that data that's on site. And that is readily available today and it has been for years, and it should be even more transparent going forward.
So specifically this is something that the industry supports doing?
And that will be another one of the recommendations that this body insists upon. 144 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
And I want to point you to several of our members who are already on their websites putting even more information out. We've got several members also who are working nationally and internationally at finding the best next generation of these chemicals. And I think it's both because of the interest of the public that is very valid and other advances that are moving this industry forward all the time.
I want to take a moment. We invited the United States Environmental Protection Agency Region III to participate today and we'd like to take this moment to read into the record a letter of response from them. I think it will be of interest to people at this hearing.
"Dear Councilman Jones: Thank you for your invitation to testify about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus Shale before 145 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Philadelphia City Council's Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment. "Unfortunately, I am unable to attend your hearing. However, I would like to take this opportunity to update you on the action the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking with regard to hydraulic fracturing. "Natural gas plays a key role in our nation's clean energy future and hydraulic fracturing is one way of accessing that vital resource. Over the past few years, the use of hydraulic fracturing for gas extraction has increased and has expanded over a wider diversity of geographic regions and geologic formations, including Marcellus Shale. Given this expansion and the increasing concern about potential impacts on drinking water resources, public health, and environmental impacts, EPA believes further study is necessary." (Applause.) 146 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
"In order to address those concerns and strengthen our clean energy future, EPA announced in March 2010 that it will study the potential adverse impact that hydraulic fracturing may have on drinking water and water resources. EPA understands that citizens and their representatives want to be assured that hydraulic fracturing is safe, and we believe this is a fair question that deserves serious study. "EPA is committed to using the best available science in this process and we have engaged independent experts and the public on how to best conduct this study. The study will be conducted through a transparent, peer-reviewed process, with significant stakeholder input. In July, August and September 2010, EPA held highly attended public meetings across the country to discuss the design and scope of the study. "As part of the study's information gathering process, EPA has 147 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 issued voluntary information requests to nine leading national and regional hydraulic fracturing service providers. This data is integral to understanding any potential relationships between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water. Through this information request, EPA is seeking information on the chemical composition of fluids used in the hydraulic fracturing process and data on the impacts of the chemicals on human health and the environment. We are also seeking information on the standard operating procedures at hydraulic fracturing sites and the locations of sites where fracturing has been conducted. "With input from our recently completed public meetings, EPA plans to complete the draft study by October 2010. EPA expects to initiate the study in early 2011 and to have the initial study results available by late 2012. More information about the study can be found 148 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 at" -- it's their website. "Finally, I would like to point out that the EPA will not pre-judge the outcome of this study, but if concerns are raised about specific threats to human health and the environment while the study is ongoing, EPA will not hesitate to investigate and take action using its existing authorities. "Once again, thank you for your invitation. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or have your staff contact Mrs. Megan Mackey, EPA's Pennsylvania Liaison. "Sincerely, Shawn M. Garvin, Regional Administrator." (Applause.)
We just got this faxed to us and I thought it was appropriate to read into the record. My only reaction is that ordinary people working together can do extraordinary things, and I'm pleased with the EPA's stance. 149 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 We're going to continue the hearings, and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown has a few questions.
I do. Thank you very much. Ms. Klaber, you open your remarks by saying that your organization expects to move, and I quote, "safely and responsibly" as we look at this issue. Share with us what the 43 small businesses have done already that support that statement.
Actually, the 43 businesses are the midstream and the drilling companies. The remaining of the 130 or so members have some small businesses in there. So, if I may, I'll respond to your question. Those 43 companies who are doing the drilling, who are responsible for the safety and the environmental protection are involved in quite a few ways. In my testimony I referred to the gas management work that 150 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 we did with the DEP in an area that is really critical to the safety and the protection of groundwater, and that's how you drill a well, how you do it. Not just how it's done in other places, but how we make sure that we're understanding the geology of Pennsylvania. It's not a homogenous geology. We've had some of the nation's foremost experts from among the industry come to Pennsylvania to advise, to help develop not only the best practices, but the regulations that were reflected in the Chapter 78 regulations. So I think that's a very critical issue. Second I would put the safety work. We have a safety committee that has representation from across both the drilling companies, the midstream pipeline companies, as well as the associate members, those who are also on site and need to be partners in safety. We have worked to develop a first responder program that was put in place originally last spring, and that has gone 151 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 through a "train the trainer" process and is now being rolled out among municipal officials to make sure that the training that they've already received for decades, that they also understand what issues may be involved at a well site, to recognize what they may encounter in a first response. And it's very important that we be partners with those folks who have the first responder responsibilities in our community. So that training has been a very big part of what the safety committee has done.
Do you believe there was a lack of that in the Gulf debacle?
I really am not -- I mean, I know a lot of what's going on in detail in Pennsylvania, and technically I'm not qualified to comment on all the technical issues in the Gulf.
Given that then, what would you say, given your rich experience on the other side of the 152 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 ledger, what are one or two lessons learned?
Well, I think accountability is very important. That's been a discussion in the Marcellus Shale Coalition, that the responsibility for that site is with the operator, and that's why it's so important that our safety practices and environmental practices are spread throughout that supply chain. But it's ultimately the responsibility of the operator of that site. I think that's a lessen learned in terms of accountability. The size and shape and conditions of a well in the Gulf of Mexico versus on the surface in Pennsylvania are very different landscapes, but I think the other lesson learned has to be around well casing. And that's why that's been such a big focus, making sure you're building those wells correctly, that they protect the environment and that they have an 153 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 integrity for not just environmental protection, but obviously the safety of anybody on the site or proximate to the site.
So then with that said, is there uniformity then in just the building of the well? Because I have yet to hear affirmatively that -- uniformity helps take the mystery out of a lot of this and it also opens up the transparency piece of this. So with X number of members that make up the Coalition, where might there be some uniform practices?
Good question. Certainly uniformity in the well casing reports, how do you log what you're finding, what are the steps that you're going through, all that needs to be reported, submitted to the Department's Bureau of Oil and Gas. There's also consistency in the water management plans, what are the elements that need to be there, from the time of any withdrawal 154 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 through how that water is handled to its ultimate either reuse or disposal. That water management plan, through the efforts of the Department in the past few years, have become more streamlined. We have six different regions of DEP. Five of them have a Marcellus well, at least one, in them. It's important to be consistent across those regions so that the industry knows what's acceptable and so that the agency can be consistent as well. So there's been a lot of hard work, rolling up the sleeves in rooms to define what the requirements are for these wells. It may be different from the shallow wells that have been drilled for over 100 years in Pennsylvania.
So with those three that you've mentioned, who then is responsible for the audit? Accountability is one thing, but who has the hammer once there has been a violation of what those standards are? 155 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
The enforcement, the inspectors from the Department of Environmental Protection have that authority. Those are both done at the regional office level and obviously coordinated out of Harrisburg.
Is there any self-imposed enforcement procedures amongst the group where you hold your peers accountable?
Right. There's a tremendous amount of that. In our organization, I would say that's the single value add. It could be otherwise just a lot of individual companies being regulated by DEP, EPA, basin commissions and otherwise. But it's really -- I think the value out of my organization to be able to bring those people together, whether it's with regulatory agencies or not, we do it both ways depending on the issue, share what we're finding in different places around the play, get folks up to speed very quickly who are 156 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 coming to Pennsylvania. We've been thrilled when a new company decides to enter the Marcellus. One of the first places that they call is the Marcellus Shale Coalition, because they know they can go from zero to 60 to understand what the requirements are, what the best practices are, and I think that's what makes the organization a value to our members.
And, lastly, what is the temperature with regards to the relationship that your organization shares with its neighbors?
Well, most of my members at this point do have individuals who are responsible for, I guess we call it, the advance work, really understanding what the requirements are in individual municipalities, because those vary across municipalities in Pennsylvania, making sure to meet up 157 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 front the local emergency response officials, the fire department, the police, the local PennDOT office. We're doing a lot of work with PennDOT to make sure that before we come into a community, we know what the road use agreement is, know what the bonding requirements are. So I would say that that advance work is probably the most valuable aspect of working with our local communities, and then obviously being responsive and communicate, and that's what spending -- what we need to invest even more in going forward.
The communication piece, because there are citizens who do not fit in any of those categories you just mentioned, but yet are deserving of that reality coming in their backyard.
Absolutely. And I think that landowners who have leased their land with a gas company probably do 158 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 have a lot more information than those who have not or those who that's not -- they don't own the land and haven't had that opportunity. So I agree with you. Communication is key. That is something that I think we're focused on doing even more of, but, as you know, it's a very big Commonwealth. I know Philadelphia is at the center, but there are 66 other counties and we're spending a lot of time in each of those communities.
Okay. Well, I thank you all for your important testimony. Any final closing comments or remarks you care to make, any one of you? (No response.)
Then thank you very, very much for your testimony. If we could please invite members of Panel No. 3, which include Denise Dennis, historic farmland owner; Iris Marie Bloom, Director of Protecting Our Waters; and Dr. Frederic Murphy, Temple University, Department of 159 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Economics. And if we could please invite to the table Congressman Joe Sestak's representative to read your statement to the record, fully recognizing that time is not your own, like the rest of us. Please have a seat. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Okay. We will start with the representative for Congressman Joe Sestak. If you would state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is Bill 20 Walsh. I'm the Congressman's District Director. I work at his district office in Media, Pennsylvania. I've known the Congressman since our plebe year at the United States Naval Academy many years ago. I've had the honor to work for him 160 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 for the past four years, and he asked me to pass to you and to President Verna the sincere appreciation for the opportunity to testify today. I've left copies of his press release over there describing his position on the Marcellus Shale, for those who want them, and if there others who need them, they can contact our office and we'd be happy to provide them. With that, I'll provide the Congressman's statement. President Verna and Councilmembers, my thanks to you for bringing together such a wide range of experts today to testify on the environmental impacts that hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region. Accountability and accessibility are the two crucial elements of good government and should be applied to all activities in our watersheds, including the stewardship of the Marcellus Shale. 161 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 That is why I co-sponsored the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, or FRAC Act. This bill would take the important step of closing the Halliburton loophole, which exempted hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the 2005 Bush Energy Act. Its passage -- (Applause.)
Its passage would allow the EPA to assist the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in the regulation of hydraulic fracturing and provide for enhanced protections. Unfortunately, I am one of only two Pennsylvania members of the House of Representatives currently co-sponsoring this bill. (Applause.)
I also supported an effort to include language in last year's Appropriations bill to allocate funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the impacts of hydraulic 162 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 fracturing in unconventional shale plays such as the Marcellus Shale formation here in Philadelphia. It is, therefore, critical that this study be detailed and completed in a transparent manner. As such, I submitted a public comment to the EPA which recommended a thorough and scientifically based study. I also encouraged the EPA to complete this effort in as expeditious a manner as feasible given the strong economic pressures and rapid development already taking place in our nation shale plays. There is extraordinary economic potential associated with the development of Marcellus Shale resources. However, as the oil spill in the Gulf reminded us, there is also great risk when industry is allowed to police itself when our quality of life, present or future, is at stake. (Applause.)
Our nation should be committed to taking steps needed to transition us away from fossil fuel, but 163 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 this will take time. Through that process, there needs to be a responsible utilization of our domestic energy resources, including natural gas. Natural gas can boost our economy and cut our dependence on foreign oil. It produces half the carbon emissions of coal, allowing us to reduce our impact on climate change in the near term. In addition, the responsible development of the Marcellus Shale formation can create needed jobs in our state during these difficult economic times. However, in order to ensure that jobs in Pennsylvania are filled by Pennsylvanians, not out-of-state workers, I recently introduced House Bill 6141, the Marcellus Shale On-the-Job Training Act of 2010, to provide a national grant program for on-site training in this field. Unfortunately, this legislation is not yet law. The scale of natural gas -- the natural gas boom in the Marcellus Shale 164 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 region is unprecedented, and we cannot compromise the right of Pennsylvanians and the generations that follow to have a clean and safe environment, including clean drinking water. (Applause.)
That is why I've called for a halt to new drilling until greater environmental, health and safety regulations and legislation can be finalized and until we have had time to train Pennsylvanians for the jobs now going, in the vast majority, to out-of-state workers. The coal industry left our state with a legacy of 2,500 miles of deteriorated streams, 250,000 acres of contaminated land and a $15 billion clean-up bill. Let us not make mistakes like that again. Lack of governmental and regulatory foresight should not lead Pennsylvanians to needlessly bear the burden of the increased cost to our infrastructure, risks to our health and 165 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 safety, and environmental degradation once more. In closing, let me thank President Verna, Councilman Jones and the Philadelphia City Council for your desire to see this and other environmental issues reviewed in a thorough and thoughtful way. I have no doubt that if the best science, public policy and leadership are applied to this extraordinary opportunity, protections will result that will simultaneously benefit our environment and our economy in a way that will make the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the global standard for responsible stewardship of natural resources. We should settle for nothing less. Thank you. (Applause.)
Sometimes it is very difficult to remember that I'm up here to chair this. I caught myself clapping about the jobs part. I had to 166 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 restrain myself.
Will the next person to testify please approach the mike and read your name. And remember, once again, feel free to summarize. All of this will go into the record. All written testimony will be memorialized in the record. Thank you.
Councilman Jones and Councilwoman Reynolds Brown, thank you for inviting me to speak today and for having the discernment and, might I say, courage to convene these hearings. Before I start, I want to hold up a book that was written by a Pennsylvanian, Rachel Carson. Fifty years ago she warned the nation about the effects of chemicals, non-biodegradable 167 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 chemicals, on our environment, and she's considered the mother of the environmental movement, and I am evoking the spirit of Rachel Carson here today, and our Department of Environmental Protection is named after her, and I hope they live up to the woman whom they are named for. So now I will begin my remarks. Believe it or not, I am not --
I am Denise Dennis. I am not a professional environmentalist. I am not an activist. I am here today as a private citizen with knowledge to share. I speak for the landowners in the Marcellus Shale region. I am all for progress, but I am for progress that is at least reasonably safe. To ensure the safety of the people of the Greater Philadelphia area, we need cumulative impact studies and results of 168 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 EPA studies before allowing gas companies to drill in the Delaware River Basin. I have lived in Philadelphia for 30 years, but I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania in what people think of as the coal region, although I've never seen a coal miner. I am also the steward of a property on the Marcellus Shale that was settled by my ancestors, free African Americans who came here from Connecticut 200 years ago. My four generations of my family are buried in the cemetery on our family property. We have been working to preserve the property, which the National Trust for Historic Preservation has identified as one of the rarest African American historic sites in the United States and one of the kind. There is no 21 other African American family that has been able to retain ownership of its property for 200 years. (Applause.)
And, again, that 169 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 property is on the Marcellus Shale. As I speak today, please remember how the tobacco industry tried to deny the impact of smoking on our health. (Applause.)
And how they attempted to intimidate and to silence anyone who tried to simply tell the truth. I began to research gas drilling when after receiving offers from various gas companies for leases to drill on our farm. I decided to find out for myself what this drilling entailed. I approached it with an open mind. I must say, though, I had reservations, thinking about all the African Americans who had their land swindled away from them, taken from them, when they had no rights in the courts and also stolen from them, because, again, courts would not defend them. So when I was offered gobs and gobs and gobs of money, I didn't think 170 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 this is good. I thought anything this good is too good to be true, probably is too good to be true. (Applause.)
Because, as I've said to my -- that is a predominantly white area. I said, This is what it feels like to be black, as the gas companies have told false truths to get people to sign leases up there. I approached it nonetheless with an open mind, because if this proved to be safe, it would have been great for us, because it would have given us money to go on with our preservation projects. So if it proved to be safe, I would have been all for it. Unfortunately, though, the more I learned, the more I learned and studied the drilling process, the more concerned to horrified I became. (Applause.)
The farm is about ten miles down the road from a place called Dimock, and if you go to the 1850 171 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 census, you will see the names of James Dennis and Henry Dennis, my great-great-great grandfather and my great-great grandfather. And the only reason they're not in Dimock now is, Henry married Angeline and moved down to the farm, right ten miles down the road, her family's property. On New Year's Day 2009, a gas well exploded because the cement well casement -- those cement, steel, cement we heard about today, guess what? It cracked. Designed by Halliburton. The same designer of the well in Dimock designed the well in the Gulf in the BP spill. Right now 32 residents of Dimock -- and it's a small place. Thirty-two is like half the population -- have to have their water delivered to them for all their needs - for bathing, cooking, drinking and household chores, because their water is contaminated. Imagine what would happen, 172 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 whether it's in the near future or the distant future, if the population of the Greater Philadelphia area had to have their water delivered to them. Imagine the pecking order. Imagine the pecking order about who would get the clear water and who would not. Imagine all the lawsuits when the gas companies deny culpability, as they have done in Dimock. They say the methane was already there. You heard Ms. Klaber. The methane was in the -- well, if you know the methane is there, don't drill. If this sounds improbable that American citizens who pay their property taxes and who are living their lives not having to worry about contamination are now having to have their water brought to them, talk to the residents of Dimock. (Applause.)
You might see television commercials now extolling natural gas as clean energy. This is not 173 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 true. (Applause.)
I promised myself I was going to be calm. The process for extracting natural gas from shale is as dirty as coal mining, and, as I said, I'm from the coal region. When natural gas escapes into the atmosphere as unburned methane, it is times more powerful than carbon 12 dioxide at trapping heat. 13 (Applause.) 14
You know, when 15 your ancestors are buried somewhere, you 16 do your homework. 17 The industry claims that 18 fracking doesn't cause methane 19 contamination, but what the industry 20 doesn't tell you is that drilling the gas wells releases the methane that then migrates to the wells and aquifers. I've heard them speak before. The industry says that hydraulic fracturing -- you heard it here 174 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 today -- has been around for 50 to 60 years, but what they don't tell you is that horizontal hydraulic fracturing, the kind that you use to go into shale as deep as the Marcellus, is new, and it was developed by Halliburton, and it is untested, and Pennsylvania is the lab and Pennsylvanians are the lab rats. (Applause.)
Yes, especially the people upstate, my neighbors. The industry claims that this will bring jobs to Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a journalist and I interviewed Secretary Hanger for an article, and I said, Secretary Hanger, who is Secretary of the DEP, from my data I've learned that most of these jobs are going to people from out of state who are now riding around in their trucks up there with confederate flags, who have years of 175 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 experience in this industry. And Secretary Hanger said -- and I've read it so many times from my notes that I know it by heart -- It is true, most of the jobs are going to people from out of state, but the Governor and I believe they should go to Pennsylvanians. The industry claims that only one percent of the solution, the fluid, that goes into the ground is made of chemicals. What the industry does not tell you is that it takes from two to five million gallons of fresh water to frack a well, and one percent of two to five million gallons is 200,000 gallons to 500,000 gallons of toxic chemicals. And there was a big discussion today about what comes out and what doesn't come out. This is from a scientist, Sandra Steingraber. This is what comes back in addition to the chemicals, in addition to the brine, benzene brine and radioactivity, because it is that level that shale has radioactive qualities to 176 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 it. So what also comes up in this water, benzene brine, radioactivity and heavy metals, that for the past 400 million years have been safely tucked a mile below the surface, and now because of drilling, these things come to the surface. And they are not biodegradable. You can't clean them up. I was listening to Ms. Klaber. What was her word? You can -- something that implied clean them up. No can do. The science is there. I'm an ordinary person. I could find this science. And I heard what the industry said and I looked at what the industry told me and I looked at what the scientists, multiple scientists, told me, and I said someone is not telling the truth here, and it wasn't the scientists. You can spin anything. They're spinning, you know, like a jowly with plates. They're spinning. They're spinning people. We got to make sure the plates crack. Okay. There is a PR campaign 177 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 now on television and the radio describing natural gas, and they're spending millions of dollars on these campaigns claiming that natural gas is home-grown American energy for Americans. The truth is that all of the companies investing in the Marcellus Shale are multi-national corporations. For example -- and I've had letters from all of them -- EnCana is Canadian based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Chesapeake, 32 percent of Chesapeake is owned by Statoil, a Norwegian company, and they will not allow hydraulic fracturing in Norway. Schulemberger, a French company, is a major shareholder in Cabot. An Indian company has invested $6 billion in the Marcellus Shale, in land owned by Pennsylvanians. And a Japanese company has invested 1.6 billion. The largest American-only gas company, Devon, has not invested in the Marcellus Shale because they believe it is too risky. Already a 178 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Pennsylvania-to-Canada pipeline is planned. This gas is not going to stay in Pennsylvania and lower your gas bills. It's not even going to stay in the United States. Rather, this gas will go into the global marketplace, where it will make international shareholders wealthier than they already are. Just as -- (Applause.)
Just as corporations received tax breaks based on the rationale that they would create jobs for Americans, only to then take those jobs overseas where labor is cheap in order to make their shareholders' profits higher, the gas companies will take natural gas from Pennsylvania, pay a few people chump change and reap stratospheric profit, leaving us to clean up the mess they leave behind. (Applause.)
Including healthcare for those stricken by the effects of contamination. And I've got 179 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the information on asthma, cancer, infertility, brain lesions. These are the health issues we can look at, and we'll have to take care of them. And the effects of living in a ravaged, a ravaged Commonwealth. The gas industry has the financial resources to go back to the drawing board and develop a way to extract gas from shale safely. If we stand up to them, perhaps they will. We have the shale. We've got it. We've got the resource. It has been here for 400 million years and it isn't going anywhere. The industry has threatened Harrisburg that they will leave if Harrisburg doesn't comply with their demands. But, my friends, as long as there is gas in Marcellus Shale, the industry will remain interested in it. We've got the bargaining chips that we're rolling over. We can afford to wait for the EPA and for cumulative impact studies. We've got the cards in our 180 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 hands. We just got to stand up. (Standing ovation.)
Someone needs to be the adult in this situation. Someone needs to stand up and say, Stop, wait and listen. (Applause.)
We need to understand the overall risk and the impact on our community, our state and our nation. Our nation is at stake. We're going to poison ourselves into oblivion. We're not going to have to just import oil; we're going to have to start importing water. Isn't that going to be fun? Eight blocks east and one block south from here, a few men stood up in 1776 and said, Enough is enough. Now, they were not perfect men. A lot of them had slaves. But they did stand up to the most powerful empire of their time, the British. What better place, what better place than Philadelphia for -- 181 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 (Applause.)
-- for someone, the DRBC maybe, to say, Enough is enough. We're going to wait, we are going to wait and see the results of the EPA and cumulative impact studies, and until then, the Delaware River Basin is off limits. (Applause.)
I have no 18 questions on that. I'm going to let the other panelists speak, but that was powerful, and thank you. (Standing ovation.)
Well, I feel sorry for the next panelist. I really do. But please begin your testimony.
Thank you. Denise 182 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Dennis is a wonderful researcher, wonderful speaker, wonderful writer, and I'm proud to be sitting next to her. My name is Iris Marie Bloom and I'd like to thank you, Councilman Jones and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, for your leadership prior to today and your leadership today. We really, really appreciate it. This is the most important public health issue in our region in our time. And, of course, it is an environmental issue, but I think it's very important for us to understand this is a public health issue. I speak on behalf of Protecting Our Waters, a Philadelphia-based, all volunteer, grassroots group of about 1,600 people on our list, 160 organizations in our network, sometimes tens of thousands who read what we write and a dozen people who do all the work. Thank you, Protecting Our Water volunteers, who are absolutely amazing. I am tremendously grateful for everyone 183 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 in Protecting Our Waters and everyone here today who cares enough about clean water and air, public health, climate and environmental justice to be heard. I also speak on behalf of myself. I am a people person. I live in West Philly and have worked for a healthier Philadelphia for over years 10 as an educator, businesswoman, as founder 11 and director of the non-profit Women's 12 Anti-Violence Education, as a writer and 13 editor. I am an activist, and I am most 14 amazed that Homeland Security never 15 tracked me until I began advocating for 16 clean water and clean air. 17 (Applause.) 18
There is more I'd 19 love to tell you about how much I love 20 our rivers and why, not just the tap water that I do love to drink but the rivers themselves, how well I know the Schuylkill and Delaware and how rivers bring people together across all the dividing lines known to human kind, urban 184 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and rural, upstream and downstream, all the divisions of class, race, age, culture and personal histories, but I have about points to make in four 6 minutes, so I will talk fast. 7 This is a public health issue, 8 and, City Council, we are asking you to 9 stand up for our drinking water, our 10 rivers and streams, economic justice and 11 our future loud and clear. 12 Gas drilling upriver threatens 13 Philadelphia. Toxic chemicals can in 14 fact cause serious harm, illness and 15 premature death even in trace amounts. 16 PCBs in the Hudson River were proven to 17 travel 200 miles. So fracking upstream can impact our drinking water. This June, the national non-profit American Rivers named the Upper Delaware River the number one most endangered river in the United States, a dubious distinction, due to the threat of up to 20,000 unconventional gas wells being drilled upstream. Two weeks ago 185 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the environmental group Riverkeeper released a report summarizing more than 100 cases of water contamination related to gas drilling around the country, and the independent reporters at ProPublica have documented over 1,000 instances of water contamination due to gas drilling nationwide. We cannot afford to treat contaminated water, we cannot afford to replace contaminated water, and we cannot afford to drink contaminated water. (Applause.)
I'm going to step aside from my prepared comments just to address some things that haven't been stated yet in other comments. Denise referred to the radioactivity of the Marcellus Shale. This is a very important -- this is one of the most important features that has not been adequately addressed yet. The Marcellus Shale has high levels of radium-226, which is a leading cause of 186 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 lung cancer and bone cancer. Radium-226 comes up -- the samples have come up 4 as high as 16,000 picocuries per liter. 5 That is 3,200 times the safe level for 6 drinking water, which is five. So five 7 picocuries per liter is what's safe for 8 drinking water. Sixteen thousand 9 picocuries per liter is what comes up. 10 What comes up is also 267 times 11 the safe level for exposure to the 12 environment. But when it comes up, it is 13 exposed to the environment, workers are exposed to it, and I have not heard any adequate description for treatment of this radioactive waste. So we should be clear that the waste, the flow-back, is not just toxic, but it is radioactive. So when it's called brine and we're envisioning like simple salt water, that's not it. (Applause.)
A couple of other points. There was a reference to New York City being more proactive. On this 187 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 issue, New York City, City Council and Mayor have been proactive. They insisted that a study be done. They hired a firm, Hazen and Sawyer, to do an engineering study of the New York City watershed. That cost, I believe, a million dollars. It took months, and it's done. When 9 it came back, the conclusion was there 10 should be no fracking, no horizontal 11 drilling in the Marcellus Shale within seven miles of New York City's watershed. (Applause.)
We need a comparable study for Philadelphia's watershed. That study -- the million dollars for that study is in the federal pipeline right now. Congressman Sestak and two other Congressmen have fought for that. We need to make sure that that study happens. And in terms of Pennsylvania having the most stringent regulations -- that was also stated -- in fact New York state has the most stringent regulations, 188 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 because they have a moratorium. The New York State Senate passed a moratorium on gas drilling. And that's what we need. That's what stringent regulations would mean. Until we have adequate regulations, we need a moratorium. I'm going to -- (Applause.)
So to be very clear what we're asking for, City Council, we insist that you do everything in your power -- you've already done a lot; we need you to do more -- everything in your power to demand a cumulative impact study be undertaken and completed specifically for the Delaware River Basin before any rules are issued for drilling in this watershed, before any more exploratory wells, water withdrawals or drilling permits for vertical or horizontal wells are approved. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 testimony, specifies the DRBC must review the cumulative impacts of exploratory wells, which can and do cause as much harm -- as much or more damage than producing wells. So we insist that a cumulative impact comes first. If it takes three years to perform that cumulative impact study, that moratorium will provide protection to families and children, land and water for three more years. This month, 13 more families in Susquehanna County filed suit against gas drillers for water contamination by poisonous fracking fluid, sickening a young child in one of those families. On Thursday, this Thursday, the day after tomorrow, September 30th, DEP Secretary John Hanger is expected to announce publicly that it will cost $10 million to pipe in replacement water for the families in Dimock because the nine square mile aquifer is permanently contaminated. It cannot be cleaned up. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 So they're talking about creating a whole new municipal water system, piping in water from elsewhere. The bill is going to be paid for by the State of Pennsylvania. That's us. We can't afford gas drilling. Under these circumstances, the environment and public health cost is too expensive. Please support a statewide moratorium on all new fracking permits. We're asking that as a specific demand, because there are two bills in the House -- in the State Legislature right now calling for a moratorium. The best bill is being introduced by Tony Payton from Philadelphia calling for a three-year moratorium, but any statewide moratorium we're asking you to give your full support. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 deforestation and soil compaction. Remediation for the soil and for the water quality is not an expense we can afford. We haven't talked about the salt line yet. The salt line in the Delaware River is now at Chester, five miles north where it usually is this time of year. The salt line would march north if drilling proceeds because of draining potentially billions of gallons of fresh water permanently from the ecosystem, permanently, and injecting most of that underground in a contaminated form. Furthermore, global warming and sea level rise will cause the salt line to move north and dumping of high, tedious, salty wastewater from the Marcellus Shale, and she will cause more salt. So we have a salt problem. That's a cumulative impact. It has not been studied yet. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 warming. Unconventional gas drilling contributes to global warming by pouring hydrocarbons, over a thousand truckloads per frack, plus 800 gallons of diesel per day for a typical generator into the air, along with massive routine methane emissions. Methane, as Denise pointed out, is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping, according to which scientists you're listening to, to 72 times more 12 heat than CO2. So we're talking about 13 increased global warming, but no one, not 14 DEP, not EPA and not DRBC, has any plans 15 to regulate these massive routine methane 16 emissions. Philadelphia cannot afford 17 more global warming, which threatens to 18 inundate the wetlands and eventually the 19 City itself. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 than diesel, in global warming impact when extraction costs are taken into account. This is not an alternative energy fuel. This is a fossil fuel, which dangerously increases global warming.
Further, gas drilling explosions, fires, blowouts, pipeline problems create potentially catastrophic risks for the region, which have yet to be evaluated, let alone prevented. Due to its structure, in that DEP is directed by the bus, Ed Rendell, to fast-track drilling permits that's a structural problem, they're fast-tracking drilling permits and the same entity is charged with regulating the processes that result from those same drilling permits that are being handed out like candy. So because of that structure, because of its lack of funding, its inability to catch up to the pace and destructiveness of this industry, DEP is unable to appropriately regulate this industry. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Secretary John Hanger said that the June 3rd Clearfield blowout would have been catastrophic had a single spark been present. As it was, it was merely a disaster. As everyone knows, toxic fluids and flammable gas spewed 75 feet into the air for hours in that 9 incident. It was potentially 10 catastrophic. That happened in a 11 beautiful state forest. In this more 12 densely populated region, that spark more 13 likely would have been present, turning 14 disaster into catastrophe. 15 We need a moratorium for safety 16 and emergency planning that has not happened yet. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 safety planning, and that is the case throughout the State of Pennsylvania. We need facts, not fabricated figures. The industry's only argument about how they're going to benefit the public, the general public, is jobs. No 8 jobs will be created in Philadelphia due to gas drilling, unless we get a whole new crop of environmental lawyers, which we sorely need, and civil rights lawyers, which we also need. Furthermore, the industry's prediction of 90,000 jobs created this year by drilling was fabricated by a computer program called IMPACT, which can produce whatever numbers are desired using fabricated multipliers. This discredited study was paid for by the industry. Pennsylvania Labor and Industry figures show an increase of only 2,500 in-state jobs in the mining sector since 2007 and 5,000 jobs in the hospitality sector, according to Responsible Drilling Alliance. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 are the state figures. No 90,000 jobs. That is a fabrication. We need facts. I'm just going to say this, because my mother died of lung cancer after smoking for 60 years, and my brother has worked in the -- has worked against tobacco for many years as a lawyer, and every time I tell him what the PR strategy is of this industry, he is stunned how identical it is to big tobacco. This is not just rhetoric. This is what they're doing. Big gas behaves like big tobacco, which actively suppressed scientific evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer for decades, while arguing that our economy needed all these jobs. Same PR strategy, same de-valuing of life and health. Why is the industry trying to rush and fast-track everything? Common Cause has shown the industry spent $5 million lobbying in Pennsylvania. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 grease the rails of speedy drilling. Why? They want to drill fast before the EPA study or any cumulative impact study can be done, before lawsuits have time to even come to court or let alone be resolved, and before the general public can fully comprehend the massive harm. )
Unions are being shut out from gas drilling jobs, but only unions can make drilling safer, because workers who speak up about health, safety or environmental violations can be fired without whistleblower protections, whatever state they're from, wherever they're from. They have no protection if they're not in a union. And many people have spoken to workers on site, and that's what they say. They say, We are paid a lot of money to do a job and look the other way and not speak the truth. A diverse economy is a healthy economy. Eco-tourism, organic farming, trout fishing, healthy agriculture, 198 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 hiking, every other form of commerce that requires clean water, clean air and healthy, beautiful landscape are all at risk. Trout fishing one species alone of trout puts $4.7 billion into the Pennsylvania economy every year. And if you look at a map of the best trout fishing streams -- I didn't know this until I started studying Marcellus Shale, where the trout fishing streams are. They overlay -- these are all the trout fishing streams. They overlay exactly on top of the Marcellus Shale extraction areas. We've been warned. People have come all the way from Texas to warn us that the air pollution is worse than the water contamination. There's a problem with fragmentation here, fracturing and fragmentation. The agencies are fragmented. So it's my understanding the DRBC does not control or study or worry about air pollution. Their job is water 199 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 quality. DEP is being directed to fast-track permits. EPA is kind of shut out from the whole thing because of the Halliburton loophole. So who is looking at air pollution? Studies have confirmed that in Fort Worth gas drilling poured as much CO2 into the air as all the cars in Fort Worth annually. You can replace water, but you can't replace air. Just a little bit more. And I know people have a lot to say, so I really hope we can hear from the public, but we need to know that Pennsylvania DEP has logged over 1,614 gas drilling violations since 2008, of which 1,056 are identified as most likely to harm the environment. We can't afford this kind of damage for the sake of a boom-and-bust cycle. Marcellus wells are depleted 75 percent within the first year, according to industry records. When the wells are done, the destruction of habitat, wetlands, streams, water quality, air 200 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 quality, climate and public health remains behind. Not just for a few months, but for many years, for decades, and as Dr. Boufadel pointed out, for 10,000 years in terms of all of the toxic materials that are injected underground. The only reason -- I'm sorry. Just a little bit here. Councilmembers, we have to stand up, slow down, say halt, say study first, say moratorium until science, not cash, can guide policy. We have to protect our neighbors by insisting on no 15 forced pooling. If forced --
If forced pooling were to go through, then this precious land with this amazing legacy on the Dennis farm would be forced against their will to have gas drilling underneath their property, as well as all around their property. We must insist that PGW not buy Marcellus gas for as long as it takes for 201 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the EPA study to be done, for our own cumulative impact study to be done and for the public to be in discourse to run its course. We need a societal consensus about whether or not this is good. So, PGW, don't buy Marcellus gas until then. Meanwhile, we must reduce our carbon footprint as if there were no gas. There are 250 cities Philadelphia's size in China which heat 100 percent of their hot water using solar systems. We can do that. (Applause.)
There's a lot more I would love to say about people, because rural people from Tioga County, Bedford County, Bradford County, Sullivan County, Susquehanna County are calling me day and night because I've got Protecting Our Waters on my Gmail and on my website and they think that I can help protect them. And that's why I'm coming to you. That's one of the reasons I'm coming to you, because rural people -- we are healing 202 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the urban rural divide and we are caring about our rural neighbors as well as our urban population. We know your first job is to protect the urban population here, but we do need to protect our neighbors as well. The only reason for the Marcellus rush is that fossil fuel extraction is the most profitable activity known to man. Check out marcellusmoney.org to see whose pockets Marcellus money is filling. But their money isn't going to stop us from protecting our health, our waters, our flowers, our fields, our air, our climate, our economy, our people, our future. (Standing ovation.)
I hope you're all clapping for your yourselves, because your dedication really matters. And before I turn the mike over to our esteemed economist, I just want to mention www.protectingourwaters.com as a 203 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 way to find out more information and look at our allies' links. Thank you.
I want to thank everyone for their patience. We are running behind time. I told you five minutes. It seems as though everyone's watch is broken. So is mine, because the information is important to get out there. But what we want to do is get everybody in so it's a matter of public record. So, remember, we are listening. All written testimony will be memorialized. If you want to summarize, feel free. Thank you and begin your testimony.
Okay. I'm Frederic Murphy, a Professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. S. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. S. energy markets, and I was involved in the major policy analyses that went through for all the major energy legislation that affected the nation when the first energy crises hit in the 1970's. I've also been involved in economic impact assessments. I took the Army Corps of Engineers' economic assessment of the deepening of the channel, and I was the one who found the major flaws in that first analysis that caused them major headaches and having to redo that study. I've also looked at the economic impact of casinos, and I found the major flaws in those studies as well. And so I do have a background of digging deeply into these things. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 only had a few hours to look at this, so these are preliminary views. But let me first start out with the basic principles that I use to look at an economic impact statement. First, number one, it's a sell document. These documents are produced by interested parties who want to sell a position, sell a project, and they all point out the positives and never the negatives. And next, a consultant who writes one of these documents has to be as positive as possible, because otherwise they wouldn't have any future customers. So you always have to put on your green eyeshade when looking at these things. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 talking about projects like doing each other's dry cleaning, which clearly does not add jobs to the economy. And then -- and this involves being very careful about understanding the net job additions that come from the project as opposed to the gross job additions. So that, for example, in the casino economic impact reports, they talked about all the jobs they added in the casinos, but they did not address the question of what were the job losses elsewhere, because people have constant recreation budgets they don't violate and if they spend their money in the casinos, they don't spend their money at local restaurants and local entertainment venues. And so that means the casinos were a net job loser for the City. This applies to stadiums, it applies to concerts and arts. It applies to the Convention Center and even medical research labs. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 local recreation dollars. That means other recreation businesses are impacted in the region. Convention centers bring in outside dollars, but they cost a lot of money and don't make any money on themselves. So it's a question of whether that's a good investment. Medical research labs I put on here because that's 100 percent outside money from national institutes of health and other research funders that generate huge jobs without a lot of cost to the City. Now, the other question I ask, Are the numbers consistent with other economic impact statements. So that, for example, SugarHouse claimed that they would provide jobs that average $40,000 each. Foxwoods said $18,000. You look at Foxwoods' report, Foxwoods told the truth. And you look at the casino reports. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 showed that they were job killers, too. So now this brings me to the gas report. And, again, this is preliminary, because I haven't spent hours digging through the numbers, but clearly, the industry puts its better foot forward in this report. It talks about all the positives. And probably the job numbers are inflated, but I haven't had a chance to check the multipliers in this model that they used. They're checkable at some point. The authors were paid by the industry and have worked in the industry for years. Considine is a known researcher, by the way, so he does have a respected career, but he's producing a product for the industry. Now, in favor of the gas industry report, this is a pure export industry. I mean, all that gas that they produce either substitutes for gas we would have imported or it's sold. So it's an export industry. /ENVIRONMENT - RES.
100515 Now, I would have said that there's little job loss, except in the impacted farmlands, but as was pointed out to me, I'm not an expert in recreation industries and to what extent does this do damage to the fishing industry, and I don't know, and it could be significant jobs. Now, I can't judge whether these numbers are consistent with other impact statements, but a couple points are clear. The authors try to claim that the Marcellus Shale is in competition with the Barnett Shale and other shale deposits in the country, and so they try to create this horse race sense and we got to take care of them. But, in fact, there's a national natural gas price with regional differences, and you see that PGW buys from the Gulf from standard gas supplies. And this is a national market. We're not competing against the Barnett Shale. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Now, one of the reasons for this report is to address the issue of taxes or to fight back the taxing of the gas. However, the report says nothing about the job impact of taxes. How would one do that? One would compare the number of jobs before and after the taxes with a tax model that incorporates the geology, the cost of the industry and the gas prices. There's nothing in the report on that. So the only conclusion I can come is if they're willing to pay that much in upfront money, they could afford to eat the cost of the taxes and they could afford to eat higher costs of production to make it more environmentally safe to produce the gas. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 50 mostly, whereas a few years ago the gas price was $10 a thousand cubic feet. Now, eventually, once the shales are depleted, the gas price is going to get back up there, and so no 9 matter what the taxes are, no matter what the environmental restrictions are, it will at some point become economic and there will be jobs in that industry, but they'll be jobs that are safer and better protect the environment. The other thing is that one of the things about Pennsylvania is that this has been a boom-bust state as far as natural resources. We were the major oil producer, and now there's some, but not a lot. And we've seen the destruction from the timber industry. Thank God that it was renewable and grew back. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the state. It's better to have a thousand jobs for ten years than 10,000 jobs for ten years.
It's better to have a thousand jobs for a hundred years -- did I misspeak -- than 10,000 jobs for ten years. So we don't necessarily want an extreme boom that will create an extreme bust as far as the health of the state economy. Now, the other thing is, the economics literature on taxes and on how the federal government ought to take lease bonuses and royalty payments -- there's a big literature on that -- it is important to look at, and there's -- and the thing you look at when you do this kind of tax analysis is not who writes the check to the government, but who ultimately pays. And in terms of, say, a tax on natural resource, it would just 213 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 mean lower lease bonus payments for the holder of the natural resource, and it would not mean necessarily higher cost for citizens of Pennsylvania in general. And so in conclusion, I would say that one would have to take the economic impact statement with a jaundiced eye. One would have to put on one's green eyeshade and recognize that this is a sell document. And the industry is so highly profitable, otherwise it wouldn't be paying so much in upfront royalties, that there is the opportunity to regulate and still have the gas produced or the jobs there. And there's no rush. The resource has been there for hundreds of millions of years. It will still be there. Thank you. (Applause.)
I want to thank this panel both for your passion and your knowledge about this important research we're doing. One economic 214 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 question, because this is more environmental in this nature and hearing, but I can't resist the question of, is it -- I know and I've traveled abroad where there are oil-producing nations. It is not uncommon for the residents of that nation to receive a subsidy on the gas that is produced in Middle East countries, that they get a benefit from the origin of the natural resources, meaning that people in Amman, Jordan don't pay a lot for gas because they're neighbors to Saudi Arabia and they subsidize their actual petroleum use. In the case of Pennsylvania, are there any measures that you know of or things that in other states have been done to give a hometown discount, if you would, for the resource that is produced here? We heard very little jobs being created for Pennsylvanians and a great deal of risk assumed by Pennsylvanians environmentally. Have we looked at that at all? 215 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Well, first off, one should look at the kind of cars that are driven in Saudi Arabia, and they're the biggest gas guzzlers around, because gas is so cheap. So essentially if we lower the price, we would have much higher consumption, and that has consequences for the environment and has consequences for when the resources go out and we build this infrastructure around cheap resources and we don't prepare for when the resources are going to be very expensive. So, in fact, that actually is not a good idea. If you're going to take it, take it as tax revenue and lower the cost for taxpayers in other ways.
The purpose for this hearing is to vet ideas. Even when they're bad, we need to know it.
Let me 216 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 echo, the testimony was powerful, deeply compelling and an affirmation that we need to be having this discussion. My question is, what are the elected officials doing or saying in the rural areas around this issue? Have they been energized, galvanized, talked to, sat down with, whatever?
Well, I'll just mention a couple of things, and also if Brady Russell is still here, he has more expertise on that and the big picture from Clean Water Action perspective. But Senator Ferlo is from the Pittsburgh area, not a rural area but a heavy, heavy gas drilling area, and he is the first person in Legislature to introduce the one-year moratorium. So it's very significant that somebody from one of the areas that's been drilled the most heavily for the longest is actually in the forefront of pushing for a statewide moratorium.
His full 217 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 name is what?
That's co-sponsored by Vince Hughes in Philadelphia. So that's SB 1447. SB 1447, I believe, and then HB 2609 that was introduced by Phyllis Mundy. Just a couple of other bills. I can tell you more about the bills than the specific legislators, but there's an HB 2213, which would require disclosure of chemicals. That's in the House. And then I've heard -- I haven't read the bill, but our own Senator Williams has introduced a bill requiring full disclosure of chemicals, because as we heard, the industry says they're disclosing it, but they're not. We didn't know that hydrochloric acid was being used in the fracking process until there was a hydrochloric acid spill. That's what's happening. So there needs to be that full disclosure. And you wanted to...
Well, you just mentioned it. I was going to -- Phyllis 218 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Mundy of Luzerne County, which is where I grew up, she's calling for -- well, she's also working on the forced pooling. One of the things that's happening right now that a lot of the local legislators are involved with is the forced pooling bill. They've changed it. They're calling it conservation pooling. But basically what they've attached to the severance -- they're trying to get a severance tax in Harrisburg. What the Senate attached to the legislation for the severance tax are two things. One would be exempting the gas companies from local zoning rules, so that the local zoning rules that might prevent them from drilling, they would be -- the gas companies would now be exempt. The other thing is this thing called forced pooling, which they've changed to conservation pooling. That would enable the gas companies to go on unleased land, like mine, extract the gas from the subsurface, and they say that 219 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 they're going to go under the surface, but to get those pipes underneath, we asked, they do disturb the surface of it to do it. Then they would extract the gas from properties like mine and force me to pay whatever royalty they feel like paying. They have attached those two clauses. Just like the Halliburton loophole was attached to the energy bill, the Senate has attached those two clauses. We were in Harrisburg. We talked to the House leadership or his representative. They said the House is against us. I said, Well, if the Senate sends the bill back with those two clauses, can you promise us that since the House is against it, you will not pass it, and they didn't. So look at that severance tax very carefully. That's right now where most of the attention of the local legislators. They're all over the place. 220 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Chris Carney, who is up in -- he lives in Dimock, and yet Chris Carney is not standing up. And I know Chris Carney. I am really disappointed in Chris Carney. He is going along with gas drilling. The problem that I found -- and I've stopped being angry with legislators -- everybody is handing a lot of stuff, and unless it's your property and you're taking the time or you're activists and you're taking the time to look through all of this, it is -- the truth is easy to find. You just have to take the time to do it. And when people are -- you've got a state economy that's depleted, because corporations are controlling the Legislature and the Congress in Washington, so states have no 20 money, everybody sees a cash cow and they stop thinking. That's where I said somebody has to be an adult. You know, money can't buy you love and money can't buy you depleted forests. I tried to address 221 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Philadelphia's concerns. There's so many different facets to this issue. There's so many ways in which it is dangerous, I can't begin to go into them here. And I'm certain you agree with me. So the individual legislators, remember, these are small-town people. They are dazzled by dollar bills, too.
Thank you again both very, very much for your testimony. That is an additional instruction for us. Thank you. (Applause.)
Our stenographer here, who has been taking notes for four hours straight, needs a five-minute break. So we will take a short recess, five minutes, to allow that break. Thank you. (Short recess.)
We are going to reconvene. Is the Clerk back from break? There she is. Would you announce the next panel. 222 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Carol Collier, Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission; Deputy Secretary Scott Roberts from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. And is Matthew Klayman still here from the Energy Coordinating Agency? (Witnesses approached witness table.)
I want to first thank you so much for your patience and ask you to read your testimony.
I have submitted written testimony, and there's some maps attached to that that you might want to look at. I'm Carol Collier, Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, and I really appreciate this opportunity. DRBC is an interstate federal commission, the mission of which is to manage water resources without regard to political boundaries. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 do. The members are the governors of the four basin states - Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware - and the Commander of the North Atlantic Division Corps of Engineers, who represents both the President and all federal agencies. Philadelphia serves as an advisor to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and staff members of the Water Department serve on many of our advisory committees. PWD has been a really strong partner as we manage the waters of the basin. Today I will discuss how DRBC currently provides protection of Philadelphia's drinking water, our proposed regulations for natural gas production in the basin and concerns for the future. The Delaware River is a treasure. The Delaware River drains the portions of the four states and provides drinking water to over 15 million people, including New York City and Philadelphia. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 area of the Delaware is relatively small, but it serves a big need. 7 billion gallons of water withdrawn from the basin daily. Forty-two percent of all Pennsylvanians live in the Delaware River Basin. I always think that's an impressive number when I'm in Harrisburg talking to representatives. As you know, the Delaware is the longest un-dammed river east of the Mississippi, and three-quarters of the non-tidal river is designated in the Federal Wild and Scenic River program. While there are 200 miles upstream of non-tidal, there are 130 miles of tidal river. While the tidal river is this busy working river so important to Philadelphia and the urban area, the upper river is pristine, has very high water quality and provides outstanding recreational opportunities. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the water users along the river, including the City of Philadelphia. As you know, water does not respect political boundaries, and that is why the Delaware River Basin Commission was formed in 1961, signed into law by President Kennedy, ratified by Congress and by each of the four states. We do have regulatory authority, and we will be regulating Marcellus Shale, but we also serve as a coordinator of holistic watershed management and provide a forum to adapt policies and management strategies as issues change. We develop action plans using our multi-sector advisory committees and are able to implement the strategies through regulations, operating plans such as the lower basin drought watch that we just announced last Friday. It appears that if you make a drought watch, that makes it rain. So it's good. And imposing management approaches of equitable allocation. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 states, but provides a forum for states and federal government to come together to manage critical resources. DRBC has a number of programs for protection of Philadelphia water supply currently, and I want to mention two of the most important, because this relates to Marcellus Shale regulation. One is maintaining what we call the Trenton Flow Target. If there is not sufficient fresh water flowing down the Delaware River, salty water from the bay can work its way up into Philadelphia intakes at Torresdale, threatening the operations of the water treatment facility and the health of Philadelphia citizens. This almost came to pass in the droughts of the '60s. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Engineers. The releases from the latter reservoir, Beltzville, also help flows for the water supply in the Schuylkill, your personal water supply. As of yesterday, the Commission had directed the release of almost 8 billion gallons to keep the salt away 9 from Philadelphia during these dry times.
10 I'd like to say, though, that it's 11 working now, but in the future, I am 12 concerned about climate change and how 13 that will raise the level of sea level, bringing the salt further up, also making for more intense storms but also summer droughts, something we need to talk about in the future. We also have the issue that salts, total dissolved solids, are being seen increasing in fresh water, so the water coming down to Philadelphia, due to a number of causes, but including mining and drilling.
Could you repeat that. 228 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
If you look at the chemical composition of fresh water, while it's not above standards, we don't have the same problems as, say, in the Monongahela River, but gradually we are seeing an increase in salts in fresh water, and this is from wastewater plants, road salt, but it is also from mining and drilling. The second area that we have in place now, which is especially important and to Philadelphia, is what we call Keeping the Clean Water Clean. We have done years of monitoring and found that the waters of the non-tidal river from Hancock, New York all the way down to Trenton are better than water quality standards. Three-quarters of this non-tidal water are designated Federal Wild and Scenic, as I mentioned, and that is managed by the National Park Service, but DRBC has a role in protecting the water quality of the system. And I am proud to say that DRBC has designated the 229 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 whole non-tidal river as what we call Special Protection Waters. So we are maintaining existing conditions, and it is the longest stretch of anti-degradation waters in the nation. So this SBW, as we call it, regulatory program provides an extra level of protection for the waters of Philadelphia. Let's jump to Marcellus gas well drilling. Approximately 34 percent of the Delaware River Basin -- when I say "the basin," I also include the area below Philadelphia -- is underlain by the Marcellus Shale, and, of course, it is also located in river headwaters, and this is the most vulnerable part of a river system. And there's some graphics there to look at. The shale also underlies the Special Protection Waters of the basin that I just mentioned. So protecting the existing water quality during Marcellus Shale drilling is really paramount. 230 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Potential water-related impacts we have heard about, which include consumptive use of water for high-volume fracking, treatment and disposal of the drilling wastewater, the flow-back and production waters, potential spills and non-point source runoff, potential contamination of groundwater, and changes to the landscape of the upper basin. I have found it very interesting that even though the Delaware River headwaters are more than 150 miles upstream from here, the Water Department stated in their source water protection analysis that impacts to the headwaters of the Delaware could potentially impact the City's drinking water system. And my understanding is that analysis was primarily looking at loss of forest, forest fragmentation, which of course could be due to gas flow drilling or development, but the overall changes. The headwaters of the Delaware are over 85 percent forested, and it is 231 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 these forests that protect the quality and quantity of our water systems, and forest fragmentation is really a major concern of ours. DRBC does regulate gas well drilling. In May 2009 -- so over a year ago -- I issued an Executive Director Determination stating that all gas well activity would be regulated by DRBC regardless of the wastewater or water withdrawal thresholds because of its cumulative impact, potential cumulative impact, and significant impact to the waters. At that time, we exempted exploratory wells. So they were allowed to go forward, because we put them in the same category as water wells, vertical wells that do not take the high volume of water and was more standard.
For the record and again for laypersons, exploratory well is to discover if in fact you're on a trajectory, is that right, to a gas deposit? 232 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Right. It's a well that the industry would drill down to the Marcellus, or whatever layer they're interested in, to see if it really can produce the gas, if it's worthwhile going forward.
That was not our original understanding, but, yes, sometimes they want to turn these exploratory wells into production wells. Not all of them. This past May 2010, my commissioners - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware - and the federal government directed staff to develop regulations specific to gas well drilling because of the overall impact, and that we were not to review any well pad operation applications, prepare or review for their action, until regulations are in place. We should continue to review applications for water withdrawals, 233 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 because that's something DRBC has done for years. So there has been one water withdrawal approved to date. There are no production wells in the Delaware River Basin because of DRBC action. (Applause.)
Since May, we have supplemented the Executive Director Determination stating that exploratory wells will also be regulated and, therefore, will not be reviewed until new DRBC regulations are adopted. And if I can, the reason we did that is because, one, there is different operations when you're drilling down over a mile. So there is more site infraction. And as you mentioned, the exploratory wells can become production wells. We are concerned about the siting of wells, so if we don't regulate exploratory wells, we might have lost that whole portion of it. We did provide exemptions for 234 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 up to ten wells because they were already in the process and had already gone through the Pennsylvania state review approval process. So there's seven new exploratory wells that have occurred from the summer up till this time, but we don't see any others coming on board until we have regulations.
So if I understand what you just said, we have somewhat of a moratorium?
My commissioners don't like to use that word, but we are not reviewing or taking any action on well permits until we have regulations in place.
We really do appreciate the good work of Congressman Sestak, Hinchey and Holt for providing dollars or starting the path to dollars for a U.S. geological survey cumulative impact study. It needs to be done, but 235 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 we also feel that we need to get regulations in place, and that's what the commissioners directed staff to do, and we feel that if we get draft regulations out there for public review, people will see what DRBC is interested in. We'll have a level playing field, and we'll also -- I mean, the commissioners have stated that it would be an iterative process, so that if new information comes up through the EPA study, USGS study, TMC, the Nature Conservancy study, whatever, we can reopen those regulations, if needed, but we need to get started. So DRBC staff are currently working with our states and federal agencies to finalize draft regulations, with our hope of having them out for public review by mid October. It's not very far away. Regulations will address what we are calling the three-legged stool - water withdrawal, well pad siting and operations, and wastewater disposal. 236 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 We are also evaluating bonding requirements, ground and surface water monitoring requirements, pass-by flow requirements for water withdrawals, well pad siting prohibitions, such as keeping them out of floodplains, and also incentives to avoid forested areas and steep slopes, which development there can obviously affect water quality. We are also developing a water tracking program in order to account for the source of water from each well, how much is used at the well and what's the final treatment and disposal of that wastewater. Over 15 million people depend on the waters of the Delaware. It is important that we find the right level of regulation so that DRBC does not duplicate the regulatory requirements already set by the states, Pennsylvania and New York, but that we do fill regulatory gaps and protect those Special Protection Waters and the people 237 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 downstream. And I hope that you as City Council and others all in Philadelphia will really be active in our public review process of our gas well regulations. Thank you for the time. (Applause.)
It was interesting when we did the resolution 11 and started this hearing process, a semi-friend from the Harrisburg area asked me, Well, why would a City Councilman from West Philly be concerned about this, and what do you think at the end of the day you're going to be able to do about this? If nothing else, we have raised awareness, and I am really happy you're here to hear, but what I need to know and I'm going to ask each of you. What I've learned as a freshman Councilman here is that when you don't want a law to work or you really don't want to enforce a regulation, you limit the number of 238 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 inspectors and you limit the number of resources applied to that regulatory process. Simply put, do you have enough people to monitor this?
That is a very good question, and let me start off with saying that right now I do not have a full complement of employees, because we are dependent on state and federal funding, and since 1996, we've received one year of federal funding. So we do not have the dollars that we're supposed to have. But in the proposed regulations, we have a section on fees specifically for the natural gas well drilling, and it would also include monitoring fees. So with that -- we're talking to the states now, because the question is should DRBC have inspectors or should the states have more inspectors or how do we work that best. But we do need more people out there, no doubt about it.
That's 239 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 important. Okay. I'm going to go to my next panelist.
Thank you, Councilman Jones. My name is Scott Roberts. I am Deputy Secretary at Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection for Mineral Resource Management, and I am here at the request of yourself in your request to Secretary Hanger, who couldn't be here personally. So I'm speaking for him today. DEP is charged with enforcing state laws as they relate to oil and gas activities in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and as I will try to lay out to you, we have been doing our best to keep up and change with a lot of the issues you've been hearing about today. Very early on with talk about the Marcellus Shale, Governor Rendell recognized that there was an economic opportunity being presented to the 240 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. However, he charged his Administration, including at DEP, with doing two things. One is maximizing benefits to Pennsylvanians and minimizing impacts, and it is that second part, minimizing impacts, that DEP's role falls. Pennsylvania has plenty of other agencies that can deal with economic opportunities. Our job is to enforce those laws and to do our best to protect the environment and the safety of the public. Oil and gas activities are not new to Pennsylvania. In fact, the industry itself was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania 151 years ago. Within Pennsylvania today, we have about 120,000 wells that are on Pennsylvania's inspectable units list that my inspectors go out and look at.
One hundred and 241 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 twenty thousand oil and gas wells. Sixty-six thousand of those wells are gas wells. The rest are either oil wells or fall into a legal definition of being inactive. In addition, there are over 50 large underground gas storage fields. These are facilities that were developed in already exhausted natural gas reserves, one of which being something called the Oriskany sandstone, that instead of gas coming out of, now during the low demand months in the marketplaces in the Northeast, gas is pumped back down into that reservoir rock and then at high demand periods the gas is pumped back out. It is a large program in Pennsylvania. We have had this year already 4,958 applications for oil and gas wells in the state. It breaks down to 2,539 wells for conventional gas reserves or for oil, and 2,419 Marcellus gas well applications. We see -- and this is a 242 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 long-term number -- roughly two well applications per well drilled. The industry will get applications, get permits, and then for one reason or another, never drill the well. To date --
They may end up not reaching agreement with somebody as far as property issues. They may run into financing issues. I'm not familiar with all the reasons. To date in 2010, we've had 2,036 wells drilled. One thousand and seventy-two of those were conventional oil and gas wells, 964 are Marcellus wells. There are 90 rigs in Pennsylvania capable of drilling Marcellus wells that are active. It takes them roughly a month per well to drill, to give you some idea of sort of how that plays out. And from 2005, which is an important date, because that's when the first Marcellus 243 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 well itself was drilled, to present, we've had 2,102 Marcellus wells drilled in this state and 18,740 conventional oil and gas wells. Also to date -- and I actually agree wholeheartedly with your position that if you want to judge whether or not people are truly interested in enforcing the law, are they actually walking the walk. We've done 10,340 inspections, 6,325 wells, 3,072 of those inspections, and 1,320 of those wells were Marcellus operations.
Hold it. Does this -- so if I were to go pre-Marcellus Shale, how much of an increase in activity on wells inspections does this represent for your department, roughly?
Well, in 2010, it's about half of the applications we're now getting, but a little less than half of the number of wells that are being drilled, but most of the inspections -- 244 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 we have been targeting -- we've done 3,072 inspections out of 10,000. So about 30 percent of the inspections are done on Marcellus wells, and we have inspected all of the Marcellus wells.
So is that a 30 percent increase in activity from 2007 to now?
Well, that's an interesting question, because we actually hit our highest number of well permit applications before the Marcellus came on us, with 8,000 applications. So this isn't a high point for us. But the industry is obviously changing as you look at those numbers. Pennsylvania's oil and gas industry has traditionally been one where we deal with relatively small operators, and, as a matter of fact, some of those wells I just talked about are wells drilled by private individuals to supply gas just to their home. In Erie County, that's something people do. So we go from that spectrum 245 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 up in the conventional industry to relatively sizable companies, but certainly nothing of the size we're seeing now with the Marcellus, the type of companies that are coming in for that. So our industry has traditionally been smaller. They've drilled a lot more wells, because they were all vertical wells. So to drain the gas from whatever rock they were trying to get it from, they had to go out and drill wells in close centers to be able to get the gas to drain to it. But they were lower production, shallower wells, for the most part, that don't cost as much to put into production as one of these Marcellus wells. The exception to that was back in the 1930's the drilling end of that Oriskany sandstone that I mentioned, which is physically below the Marcellus, and it was from that point in time that people realized there was gas in the Marcellus, but it wasn't until the marriage, if you will, of horizontal 246 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 drilling with hydraulic fracturing that that gas was produceable. So while the Marcellus has been known about and people have drilled through it for a long time, it's only been since 2005 that people have specifically targeted to drill it, and there was only one well in 2005.
If we were to segment your more commercial wells from your independently owned household wells, property wells, how often in the lifetime of a well or over a period of a year should a well be inspected?
Again, the life of a well starts out with, you first go out and you construct the drill pad that we've heard people talking about, and for Marcellus wells, it's about five acres of earth disturbance that's leveled off to create a place where the drilling is going to occur. Then you bring a drill rig on that drills part of the well. And, again, talking Marcellus, they drill the vertical portion, do all the 247 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 construction and that type of thing of that portion of the hole, move that rig off, move a second rig on that drills the horizontal portion of the well, move that off and then bring in yet a third well that perforates the steel pipe in the Marcellus. That moves away and then there is -- a crew comes in to actually do the hydraulic fracturing. Once that fracturing is done, then a rig comes in to clean out the well to put it into production. All of those steps -- the construction of the well pads can be done independent of the drilling, but the rest of those steps, the companies appear to be trying to make them go sort of bang, bang, bang, and it's probably six weeks to eight weeks per well to do all of that activity. At that point in time, the well is ready to be connected to a pipeline, and from that for the rest of its life expectancy, which for the Marcellus people are opining could be 30 to 50 248 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 years, it's a steel pipe sticking out of the ground. And while we try to go out and inspect those wells that are in production, really that's not where the problems occur. The problems would occur during those drilling operations. So we try to target having our inspectors going out at points of the process that are most likely to have problems.
So in that phase, how many times is a good number of inspections?
It depends again on the nature of the operation and the operator, but four, five, six times.
There's also multiple wells now with the Marcellus and the pads, because they did drill horizontally. Instead of being like the conventional wells that had to go out and drill on a grid pattern, they can put multiple wells on one pad. So we're already seeing up to ten wells being 249 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 drilled from one pad, which limits the earth disturbance, which makes those concerns perhaps lesser, but increases some materials handling issues both with drill cuttings as well as with fluids on that site.
I don't know if you can answer this, but what is the frequency of a well being closed?
You said an average lifespan could be ten years. How often and is there a process by which you monitor a well being shut down?
Yes. There are specific legal requirements in the State of Pennsylvania for what's called well plugging, and when that well reaches the end of its commercial life, the owner or operator of that has an affirmative obligation to plug that well. It has to be done in a particular manner to make sure that the gas from a depth isn't leaking up the well bore and it's safe. 250 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
So is it equally as a vulnerable time as the initial drilling? Is that also --
Oh, absolutely. And obviously with the Marcellus wells being as young as they are, we don't have any that have reached that point in their life expectancy. We do have inspectors, though, that deal with the older conventional wells and how they're plugged.
And would that plugging also include restoring the earth?
Yes. Yes. And as a matter of fact, once the well is drilled and ready to be put into production, there'll be some restoration of that well pad back down to a minimal area for the production well.
Down to an acre or so. So it sort of shrinks once the 251 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 drilling is done. Within DEP --
I see people's hands up. It's not that kind of process.
Within DEP, we've been doing a number of different things, though, to also deal with issues being raised by the Marcellus, and I provided you with some of those in written form. Secretary Hanger has clearly instructed us that he expects us to have tough regulations with great enforcement. He expects us to be on the field, boots on the ground, doing our jobs on it. The things that we are looking at and the types of things are water withdrawals, and that has been something that's been talked about, where is the source of the water from. We are working with the Delaware River Basin Commission on what regulatory form that will look like in the Delaware River Basin, but in the other river basins of Pennsylvania, the 252 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 approach we've taken is one of pass-by flow. They have to ensure that a certain volume of water passes by their withdrawal point, and that volume of water is calculated upon what's necessary for other users downstream, as well as the aquatic life in the stream. So they can't take out more than a given amount.
So as more wells -- I'm going to wait. I'm going to hold my questions that I can. Finish your testimony and I'll allow you --
But you guys are just opening up so many different aspects of questioning that it's just hard for me to resist, but go ahead.
That's why I was happy to come. We have -- as you said, one of the measures is whether you're serious about this staffing-wise. We have greatly expanded the size of our oil and 253 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 gas staffing. In 2008 and early 2009, we went to Pennsylvania's Environmental Quality Board to convince them that it was appropriate to drastically increase the fee that we charge for permit applications. That went from $250 in the case of a Marcellus well to probably somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 per well, depending upon the length of the bore hole. We have used those funds to both deploy staff in parts of the state that hadn't seen historic oil and gas activities. We opened an office in Scranton. When we put oil and gas staff in our office in Williamsport, those parts of the state had not seen these activities previously. And we increased the number of our staff. We added 37 additional enforcement staff members in 2009, 68 more in 2010. And to put that into context, while we were doing that under the 2009 state budget, we were forced to furlough from other parts of the department. So we recognize that 254 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 this is an area that we do need to devote staff to. By having that fee in place, we have the funding mechanism to pay those staff people, and we are putting them out there. Now, I would remiss to not point out perhaps at this point that the severance tax debate is raging in Harrisburg. The Governor and the Administration and DEP, even though we have a separate funding source, firmly believe that an appropriate severance tax is necessary and appropriate. What's more, we also agree that some of that money should be going back to the municipalities where the drilling is taking place to help them manage impacts. Other portions of the money -- and one of the things I'm pleased to hear about being discussed -- is having it go into environmental protection and restoration projects sort of a la Growing Greener.
I'm sorry. If we were BP, would there be anything 255 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that would closely resemble a contingency fund for just in case?
No, not that. What we do have is, we require people to post bonds for the operation and restoration of their well and well site, and that's been in the law since it was first enacted in the 1980's. It is a problem, however, in that the values that are assigned per well are low, and in a way that is incredulous to me actually, you can post a $25,000 bond for as many wells as you can possibly drill. And rather than having a contingency fund that somehow or another the taxpayers have put together, I would prefer to see real honest-to-goodness and appropriate bonding for these sites.
So to more closely adjust the per well worth and/or risk assessment to each well as opposed 256 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to a blanket?
Exactly. Some of the other things we've done is, we absolutely agree with the public and everybody else that the industry needs to be transparent with what they are using in these wells. And it is more difficult than perhaps was explained earlier in trying to get the industry to do that, but as was mentioned, we are changing our regulations and modifying them. One of those changes does require the owner of the well to submit as part of the completion report, which is required to be filed within six months after the well is finished, a complete accounting down to percentages of what was used in drilling and completing that well.
We do. We have 257 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 not seen -- there's been some talk about whether or not that hydraulic fracturing fluid, when it gets down to depth and is breaking up the Marcellus, whether or not that's creating problems with groundwater. We have no instances of that that we've seen, but we do have documented cases where inappropriate handling of those chemicals on the surface, either as they are being delivered to the site, they're spilled; as they're being mixed, they're spilled. During the hydraulic fracturing, it's a high-pressure operation. A hose will burst, the materials will be sprayed out and spilled, or after the water flows back from the well, there's materials handling problems. And those are unacceptable. They're illegal under state law, and we should not accept that, period. So that's where I come from on it. TDS was the other issue that has been talked an awful lot about and 258 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 what to do with the water that comes back up from these wells. Right now the statewide average, we're seeing about 5 percent of the water that is pumped 6 underground comes back up during what's 7 called the flow-back stage of the well. 8 There's some water that will continue to 9 come back from those wells in much 10 reduced amounts probably over the life of 11 it, but that flow-back period is only 12 about 13 percent. That's the water that 13 Ms. Klaber talked about as being recycled, which is an excellent thing, something we encourage. Industry's first steps out of the box with that was to build lagoons to hold it. I think they're starting to realize there are issues with that. And so what we're seeing is more of a movement towards container storage of those flow-back materials until they're either recycled or taken for appropriate disposal. We have put in place a 150-foot 259 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 buffer around high-quality and exceptional-value waterways in Pennsylvania for oil and gas well drilling and construction, and as I mentioned, we have an entire package of regulatory changes dealing with both the construction of water wells, the dealing with emergencies on well sites --
They are being voted on as final by the Environmental Quality Board on October 12th. So they've been both proposed, gone through the comment period and now we're up for final. The EOG well accident in Clearfield County was talked about. That was the case of people on the site just being stupid, but it was -- it points out that in a lot of human activities, being stupid is not acceptable. And in the handout I gave you, you can read a number of the different steps we are taking to 260 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 make sure that those types of accidents don't occur again. And we've also been partnering with the State Police to do something we called Frack Net, which are unannounced vehicle pullovers, pulling over trucks hauling water and wastewater and other waste from these drill sites, checking them for appropriate documentation of what they're hauling, who is it from, where it's going, as well as is the truck physically appropriate to be on the highway, are the brakes working, those types of things. So we are out there working hard on dealing with these issues. We don't have a mandate that we have to issue permits. Nobody has ever said you have to get permits out tomorrow or anything like that. However, the Oil and Gas Act of Pennsylvania does provide that within -- if actions aren't taken within 45 days, then that permit can be deemed approved. So we have a statutory issue we have to deal with. So that, I think, 261 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 can be misinterpreted by some. We have none of those that occur. We get to them all, but part of that is having staff in place to do it. One of the previous speakers invoked the name of Rachel Carson, and I work in a Rachel Carson state office building, and I agree with her sentiment. In this particular issue, I think back to one other famous Pennsylvanian, one of our former governors, Governor Gifford Pinchot, who years before he became 14 Governor of Pennsylvania came up with the 15 entire idea of conservation, which is one 16 of the three elements of modern 17 environmentalism. So I think in this 18 particular case, he's the one I try to 19 invoke, and we're trying our best at DEP 20 to implement the state laws that are out there in a way that conserves and protects Pennsylvania's environment, and I look forward to answering your questions after the next speaker.
Thank you. 262 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 We have one more panel after this. We're almost there.
Good afternoon. Thank you, Councilman Jones, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for allowing me to testify before City Council about the serious issues surrounding fracking and gas extraction from Marcellus Shale. Today I'm speaking on behalf of two organizations - the Energy Coordinating Agency, ECA, and the Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance, or KEEA. ECA is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to help people conserve energy and to work toward a sustainable and equitable energy future for all in the Philadelphia area. ECA administers almost all the low-income energy services in the City and has been a leader in green jobs training and in increasing the energy efficiency and sustainability of housing statewide. KEEA is a non-profit corporation dedicated to 263 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 energy-efficiency market transformation in Pennsylvania through advocacy, education and training. KEEA monitors and supports energy-efficiency policies at the local, state and federal level for both residential and commercial sectors to reduce carbon emissions and help Pennsylvania transition to a cleaner energy economy. ECA and KEEA support a realistic approach to the energy and environmental impacts that the fracking of Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region. The natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale is a tremendous potential energy resource, but it is not without significant risks. Chief among them is widespread environmental damage to local water and land. While so many in Pennsylvania have caught fracking fever, the dangers of watershed contamination are very real and must be thoroughly understood and addressed if disasters are 264 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to be avoided. (Applause.)
These hearings have brought many of these important concerns to light, and we applaud the Council's initiative in calling for them. While others can speak and have spoken more insightfully as to the environmental impact of fracking, I am testifying today to share with you all what we believe to be one of the most important economic and ultimately environmentally friendly benefits that Philadelphia and Pennsylvania can derive from Marcellus Shale, a substantial investment in energy conservation. Marcellus Shale has been described as a vast resource, and no 20 doubt it is potentially significant, but like all fossil fuel, it is finite. Renowned energy investment banker Matthew Simons described shale gas as having a very limited lifespan of 30 to 40 years. It is absolutely critical that 265 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Pennsylvania reduce its demand for energy as deeply and quickly as possible in order to be able to withstand -- (Applause.)
-- in order to be able to withstand the relentless economic pressure of rising energy prices. This can be achieved by instituting a severance tax in Pennsylvania and dedicating at least ten percent of any tax on gas extraction to the support of energy-efficiency initiatives for all natural gas, propane and fuel oil customers statewide. Most states, if not every one of them, with a shale gas asset, the three largest being Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia, already have a natural gas extraction tax. Yet, Pennsylvania does not. Pennsylvania must ensure that a substantial extraction tax is passed in order to pay for all damage attendant to hydraulic fracturing and related industrial practices, and it should 266 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 invest at least ten percent of this tax in energy savings for residents throughout the Keystone State. Currently, the beneficiaries of Marcellus Shale gas are the gas industry and select private landowners. Yet, all Pennsylvanians feel the burden of high energy prices. This is especially true for consumers of natural gas, fuel oil and propane. Pennsylvania Act 129 mandates that electric utilities institute programs to help consumers save energy and reduce their consumption of energy, but no such mandate exists for natural gas utilities. In addition, many of Philadelphia's low-income households, about 40 percent of them, are heated using fuel oil or kerosene, non-utility resources that lack desperately needed energy conservation programs. Not only would this money serve to reduce energy bills for vulnerable customers, but it would also stimulate the economy. Businesses saving on energy 267 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 costs are more financially sound and will be better equipped to grow and invest in job creation. And an infusion of severance tax money into the energy-efficiency market will create green jobs, as businesses and individuals are called upon to perform energy audits and install energy-efficiency measures. This is especially relevant given the testimony of the economist earlier who was talking about whether the jobs will be local. Energy-efficiency jobs, especially home audit and energy-efficiency measure installation, are local jobs. It is essential for all Pennsylvanians to benefit from the Marcellus Shale by using revenue from the extraction to help reduce their energy consumption this year and every year. Investing at least ten percent of the tax in the increase of energy efficiency of residential, commercial, municipal and industrial customers across the state 268 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 will pay lasting economic, social and environmental dividends statewide. It will also help prepare us for the even higher energy prices which will inevitably follow when the shale gas resource is depleted. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. (Applause.)
Thank you. I have one last question for the panel. The Early Protection Warning System, how are you guys plugged into that?
DRBC is one of the members. We worked very closely with Philadelphia on that, and we're one of the co-hosts for the workshop in October. And we do see the value of expanding it. I'm working with my staff now to figure out how best to do that.
There's a complementary system in place as well through Pennsylvania's Emergency 269 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Management Agency, or PEMA. If we would have an accident at any type of industrial facility that had a release or a discharge into a river or stream, that Emergency Management Agency can get that and does get that word out to suppliers that their intakes might be in danger. So there are other sort of safety nets. I don't think it is as intensive as was being described earlier, nor is it specific to this particular industry, as was described for that Early Warning Network.
Well, one of the pieces we will take from this is that that warning system, the earlier, the better. To the people who are closest to the drilling, to the people down river, that process has to be kind of consistent, and everybody -- I know when we have a certain list of numbers that in fact when something happens in Philadelphia, these are the ten people that have to be notified. It seems to me 270 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that something so important, something so vital to life should have that same kind of early, early, earlier the better warning system. So we're going to look at that as one of the recommendations.
I think you're spot on with that, and I think technology today provides us an opportunity to do that in ways that weren't possible before. Two points that I skipped over that I'm sorry I should have mentioned. One was, in the discussion of the Schuylkill River, which I understood was sort of where your drinking water came from --
-- the portion of the Marcellus that underlies the headwaters of the Schuylkill River is at present understood to not be valuable for its gas content, that tectonically that 271 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 rock has been altered and changed and heated, and the current understanding of the Marcellus is that it is not a resource.
Yeah. I think it will be a long time before you see any drill rigs up there. However, we do have four other shales that we have already received permit applications for, two shales, one called the Rhinestreet, another called the Burkett, that are above the Marcellus and two, the Mendota and the Utica, which are below the Marcellus. So there are other shale resources under consideration by industry as well.
Well, what we can take from this drilling can help us to be prepared for future applications, if there are any --
-- based on the danger and the way that we're 272 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 ferreting this gas. So I want to thank you all, and particularly you, I agree many of the residents of the City of Philadelphia don't understand clearly what is to come. Energy prices and conservation are going to be as essential as the mortgage crisis or as critical in our thinking to survival as income. Because when we spend money on utilities, that's money that we don't spend on food. So thank you. Thank you all. Can you introduce the last panel, and I do mean last.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Shalom Center; Sisters of Saint Joseph Sustainability Center; the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania; Maya van Rossum, Delaware Riverkeeper Network; and Margery Stein Schab, New York H20.
Yes. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Arthur Waskow. I am Director of The Shalom Center, which is now 27 years old. It's a national Jewishly based organization with its offices here in Philadelphia. They have been since 1984, '83. S. public 12 policy, including energy policy. And the 13 issue that we're about to face, it may 14 seem as somewhat surprising that a 15 3,500-year-old tradition would have 16 anything to say about a very new 17 technology, but, in fact, the issues that 18 we're facing around the question of the 19 Marcellus Shale and its implications for 20 human and other forms of life are in fact not so different from those faced many years ago. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 sacred science which is encapsulated in one of the great icons of this city, the Liberty Bell, would be an easy way to pluck out one's story from actually dozens that we could talk about. The line on the Liberty Bell, proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof, was -- the liberty it was talking about, if we were to look back at Chapter 25 of Leviticus, was not what we might consider freedom of the press, let's say. It was about the freedom of human beings and the earth to pause to rest, to reconsider what should be done, not to be worked to the utmost technological power even of that time, which was less oppressive and less intrusive than the technological power we have in Arian today. That's in Leviticus 25. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 pretty amazing and, in fact, the Torah has a whole discussion of the economics of it. Because as people said, Well, wait a minute, how are we going to be able to make a profit and grow food -- enough food for people to eat if we do that, and the Torah answers. But first I want to quote then something that happens in the next chapter of Leviticus where the Torah says, Now, what happens if you don't pause to reconsider, to let the land rest? What happens if you try to make it work to its absolute most efficient? And the Torah's answer is, The land will get to rest on your head through famine, through drought, through plague, through locusts, through exile; that is, people having to leave where they have lived. The land will get to rest. And that's exactly the question that we're facing. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 economic efficiency out of the Marcellus Shale or do we risk the poisoning of the water of the citizens of Philadelphia, which will produce a kind of exile, a kind of disaster in health, in economics and in every other way you want to think about it. What did it mean to pause? What did it mean to say for one year out of every seven, we do not make the earth rest? Was this just, quote, religion or was it based on observation and science? Well, we know now in fact that what the Torah answered to those who said, We won't have enough to eat, the Torah answered, There will be more blessing, more food if you pause. We know now that in fact what we call letting the land lie fallow or rotating crops, we know that that in fact produces more blessing, more abundance than if we tried to get every last ounce. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 unfruitful. Well, what this means in our generation is taking enough time to pause to think through the real implications of what we could do, and several facts about this very issue, Marcellus Shale, suggests that the pressure to move quickly is based on this shortsighted notion of super profits rather than the sense that over generations not to force Philadelphia, half the State of Pennsylvania, into exile, into disease, into disaster by trying to get super profits in a few years. Why is it that the EPA was told not to do a serious study of the impact of this kind of shale drilling? Because the shale drillers embodied in that case by former, thank God, Vice-President Cheney said, No, we don't want to have anybody look, we don't want to have to pause to find out what the true impacts would be. That's already a danger signal. /ENVIRONMENT - RES.
100515 If the businesses involved are so desperate to make short-range super profits that they can't bear to have an examination of the full impact, the full effect, that's already a danger flag. )
And a second one we have seen inside the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the last two weeks. When the issue arose of this cockamamy supposed investigation of supposed terrorist organizations, which turned out to include in fact practically entirely peaceful, peace-committed and utterly non-violent public advocacy groups like the groups that are opposing instant exploitation of Marcellus Shale, what was the reaction of the head of the Pennsylvania Homeland Protection office? The first thing that came out of his mouth to the whistleblower was, Wait a minute, we went into this and this that you're proposing to make public, it is going to damage the companies that do 279 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Marcellus Shale work and it will help the advocates of wait a minute. Why was that the first reaction of an official of the State of Pennsylvania, whose obligation ought to be to the people, not to those companies? (Applause.)
So in a kind of ironic way, the line on the Liberty Bell, which wasn't originally about that kind of liberty, turns out to be implicated when that kind of liberty, the liberty of the earth as well as human beings, to pause and to think, when that kind of liberty is jammed up against the wall for the sake of super profits turns out that the kind of liberty we call civil liberties are also in danger. Again, a danger flag that we should pay attention to. So this 3,500 years of wisdom, which is not just wisdom plucked out of the sky but wisdom grown out of the earth by farmers and shepherds and people who 280 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 grew olive trees as they watched from year to year and decade to decade and generation to generation, as they watched for what the sacred wisdom was of how to keep a culture in a society in tune with the land, out of which that culture and society could grow, and without which that culture and society couldn't grow at all, that wisdom, ancient and utterly contemporary as well, is what we should be paying attention to. Thank you. (Applause.)
I will go on the record and maybe out on a limb and say that was the most interesting application of this testimony that I've heard today.
I heard some of my -- I saw some of my Native American friends, who I won't point out, but they were nodding in agreement to some of the spiritual implications of letting the 281 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 earth rest and the nature balance implied. But I'm going to try to get us out of here at a reasonable hour, so we're going to -- I'm not going to ask you any questions. SISTER MARY ELIZABETH: Thank you, Councilman Jones. My name is Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark, a Sister of Saint Joseph of Philadelphia. I am Director of the Sisters of Saint Joseph Earth Center in Chestnut Hill and Special Assistant to the President for Sustainability of Chestnut Hill College. I am also representing Genesis Farm in Blairstown, New Jersey, an organic farm. I'm a Board member of Genesis Farm. For the past 11 years, the congregation of Sisters of Saint Joseph have had a commitment to the issue of sustainability, especially about the issue of water and the health of planet earth. As a result, we've educated and advocated about the respectful treatment 282 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of water. The issue of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale region has serious moral consequences and thus, for this reason, is a concern of ours. I urge you as City Council, as our immediate representatives, to insist that the ethical standards of purification of our drinking water be enforced on any possible contaminants from the drilling. There ought to be a moratorium on drilling until it has been shown to be absolutely safe for the Delaware River, the source of our drinking water. This is only one of the issues that threaten our planet caused by the potential drilling. Another issue such as deforestation is a major concern of ours. Twenty percent of global climate change is caused by deforestation worldwide. Legislation prior to the actual drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale 283 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 region ought to include investigation into the health-related effects of any toxic chemicals or especially radioactive ingredients resulting from the drilling and entering the Delaware River. In addition, when researching the components of hydraulic fracturing fluids that may seep into the groundwater, investigations by the DEP ought not to be funded by any money coming from vested interests in the profit of the drilling. The ethical implications of political gain or profit by individuals must be examined by those creating legislation to protect the health of Pennsylvania watersheds. Every means available for honest investigation ought to be employed by the State Legislature. As members of our City Council, you are in a prime position to call for this ethical behavior. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. 284 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Thank you. We have five people testifying with two mikes. So please share and speak into the mike and give us your name and then your testimony.
I'm Shireen Parsons. I'm a community organizer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which is based in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. We work in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Boston, Washington state, California, Ecuador, and what we do is called right-spaced organizing. What I'd like to tell you here is, you do not have a fracking problem. You have a democracy problem. We have a democracy problem in this nation. And we assist communities, free of charge, to fend off corporate assaults by exercising their God-given inherent local governing authority. And we have over 120 communities in Pennsylvania alone that have stood up to the unjust structure of 285 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 law that renders us subordinate to corporate interests in the State Legislature. They have stood up to this unjust structure of law and enacted binding local laws, ordinances, that affirm and assert their local governing authority, strip corporations of their constitutional rights of personhood. They're not persons. They're legal fictions created by the state. And because of their great wealth, their rights trump ours every time. (Applause.)
The state will not save us. The regulatory agencies will not save us. Our regulatory system was not set up to protect human environmental health. Our regulatory system was designed to serve as a barrier between corporate industries and we, the people. When our regulatory agencies permit a corporate activity, they legalize it, which means that we, the 286 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 people and our communities, have no 3 rights to protect ourselves. We can't regulate it further. And the EPA was created in 1970, our state regulatory system, subsequently, and now by every -- by all indications, our soil, water and air is far more contaminated than before our regulatory system arose. Regulations permit harm. They legalize harm. (Applause.)
That's what their job is. And they say to the corporations, With a permit -- this is what a permit does. You may spew this much filth into the soil, air and water. You will be self-monitoring. You will be self-reporting, and good luck and rake in the profits. And that is what our regulatory system does. It's working perfectly as it was designed. The City of Pittsburgh is concerned about gas fracking, and a couple of weeks ago, Councilman -- I can't remember his name. I haven't met 287 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 him, but anyway a Councilman submitted a local ordinance that was drafted by the Legal Defense Fund that affirms their right to local self-government, strips corporations of their legal rights as persons, affirms the right of every living thing to clean air, clean water and clean soil, and bans gas fracking within the boundaries of the City of Pittsburgh. (Applause.)
Other communities -- we are getting calls daily from communities throughout the Marcellus Shale and people who are -- communities that are downstream from the Marcellus Shale drilling. I got called by somebody in Brooklyn, New York saying, Help us, we are downstream from the Marcellus drilling. So what we are asking these communities to do -- and this is preliminary -- before they would enact an ordinance banning drillings in their own 288 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 communities, is to pass an ordinance in support of the Pittsburgh City Council in trying to protect its community. And this is not -- an ordinance is not legally binding in any way. This is a show of support saying we agree that we should be able to exercise your inherent governing authority. We agree that you should be able to protect your water and your community. And so this is simply a support measure. I have a copy here in my folder and I'd like to leave it with you, along with my card, and I would like to come back and talk to the full Council at some time about what we can do for the City of Philadelphia. This is the other big city in Pennsylvania. You are downstream, and you must protect yourselves. (Applause.)
We don't need a severance tax. The severance tax is an incentive to communities to roll over and 289 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 say, Okay, come and rape us, we'll get a little money out of it. We do not need any more studies. We know what it does.
All right. It would be helpful to get the Councilman's name. My attorney there is --
Because we're going to contact them. That's an intriguing concept there.
Actually, I have a copy of that ordinance. I marked it up, but I'll give it to you.
In Philly, an ordinance is law. Resolution is non-binding. So we will look at the possibility of resolution.
Yeah, the resolution is non-binding, but I encourage you to talk about doing a binding law, an ordinance, protecting the City. 290 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
We're going to spread the mike around there. State your name and give your testimony, please.
My name is Phoebe Coles. I am here testifying on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. I am a Board member of the Philadelphia League. I am representing Roberta Winters, who is our state Board Director and Marcellus Shale specialist. I'm just going to summarize some of the testimony and tell you what's coming up for us. In May of this year, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania completed a year-long study of natural gas 291 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 extraction from Marcellus Shale, including its ramifications for Pennsylvania water, air, infrastructure, agriculture, forest, tourism and economy. Today our testimony is based on member consensus. We have 40 or so chapters in Pennsylvania and thousands of members, and they were polled. And basically most important to this hearing today is that we are encouraging our legislators in all of our communities to extend the moratorium on drilling on the Delaware River Basin and really look at what the aspects of the harm could be to the environment. We're also encouraging the severance tax as well. One of the things coming up from us is, as we know that some of these issues are already being addressed, we are looking statewide at the issues of pipelines, which I think will be especially important to Philadelphia as the pipelines need to come through here to get to the Delaware port to get the 292 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 gas out of the state, as well as looking at the eminent domain issue. For pipelines we're actually having a meeting on Saturday, October 9th in Radnor -- in Wayne at the Radnor Township Building.
Sure. Saturday, October 9th, at Radnor Township Municipal Building in Wayne, we will be having a meeting to start to talk about the pipeline issues that are coming into this area, starting at 10:00 a.m. And I just encourage you to look at the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania's website to look at their position, which has already been stated, and look at some of the other ways that Philadelphia can be involved with all of the regions in Pennsylvania. Thank you.
Thank you. Can you state your name for the record. 293 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Sure. I'm Maya van Rossum. I'm the Delaware Riverkeeper and my organization is the Riverkeeper Network. I know I'm last, but I have some, I think, pretty important information to share with you about the importance of the Delaware River, economic information, which I know is a focus of today's hearing. Earlier the economist who spoke had some very interesting information, but one of the things that he specifically said was that he was missing the information about the values of the Delaware River and recreational uses and income of the river, and so I'm going to be specifically speaking to that set of issues today and touching on a couple of other things. As you know, I hope you know, the Delaware River attracts visitors from all over the world and all over the region, and they come here and they spend lots of money and they enjoy themselves, 294 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 including right here in Philadelphia. For those people who live here, the Delaware River is giving us clean drinking water. It's also giving us memorable recreation. It's giving food. There are a lot of people -- you go out, you can see the folks fishing along the banks of the river and the Schuylkill to try to get clean, fresh fish to help feed their families. And it provides good-paying jobs and supports a lot of our local economies. It is the backbone of a number of local economies in this region, upstream and down. Now, the gas drillers, they like to talk jobs a lot. They talk numbers, they talk income, they talk jobs and the economies. Well, we believe, I agree, this is about jobs, but this isn't about the few jobs that they may bring here on a limited basis or the workers they're going to bring in from out of town to work here for a short period of time, but this is about the jobs, the 295 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 good-paying jobs, that they're going to take away from people who live here in Philadelphia, up river and down river today, and it's about the jobs that they're going to rob from future generations because of the harm that they're going to inflict on the river and on the land. I do want to mention too that the gas drillers really try to shape this as a property rights fight, and they try to bring in those who are leasing the lands and have them assert their claim to get the income from the gas drilling. Well, we also believe that this is a fight about rights, but it's about the right to life and it's about the right of communities to make sure that pieces of property within the community are not used in a way that harms everybody else. That's not okay. Our rivers shouldn't be used that way and our land shouldn't be used that way. (Applause.) 296 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
But that's what the gas drillers want to do. You've heard a lot about the devastation that gas drilling is going to reap on our river and on our land, from the pollution to the deforestation, to the depletion of the water, to the traffic, to the odor, to the noise, to the runoff. Now, Dr. Martin -- and I want to get it right, because I think you were asking about it, or Councilwoman Blondell. He began his talk by saying he wants to talk about what will happen when we do things right, when the gas drillers do it right. And he can go and paint his pretty picture about what will happen if everything goes right, but the fact of the matter is, we know that the drillers aren't doing it right. We already know that they're doing it devastatingly wrong. And there's a great report that was put out recently by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association. They looked at two and a half years of gas drilling in 297 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the Marcellus Shale, and they found already 1,435 violations of law, 952 of which they have identified specifically as having potentially a direct impact on the environment. And these are not little paper violations. We're talking about the discharge of industrial waste onto the ground, pollution of Commonwealth waters and drill cuttings, brine and oil being discharged into streams in violation of the law, drilling close to a wetland or a body of water without a permit. And these are specifically, those particular violations I identify, are the ones that are environmentally harmful. Exceeding the level of wastewater in their impoundments so that you could -- you're at risk of catastrophic failure or discharge, the improper burying of drill cuttings, inadequate blowout prevention and, of course, the list goes on and on. So we already know that the drillers aren't 298 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 doing it right. And we also know that our states and the Delaware River Basin Commission don't now have the knowledge or the legal capacity to force them to do it right, because they haven't bothered to do the cumulative environmental impact analysis that's necessary, and they haven't bothered to put in place the regulations that are needed to make sure that the drillers don't hurt us. And that's not okay. So the drillers aren't going to do it right, no matter what the pipe dream Dr. Martin would like to paint. And I'll also say that the fact of the matter is that the gas drillers don't have the ability to do it right at this point in time, and one good example is the treatment of wastewater. Dr. Martin said, Well, it's the problem of the drillers what to do with their wastewater. If they can't get it clean enough and bring it up to standards, 299 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 well, that's on them, that's not on the rest of us. But we all know that's not true. If the gas drillers are allowed to create volumes and volumes of toxic, contaminated water, they're going to need to do something with it, and if they can't figure out how to do it the right way, they're going to do it the wrong way or they're going to do something they characterize as the right way, but we all know is the wrong way. And really right now there is not in place the treatment technologies or the facility to handle the flow-back water that is coming out of these gas drilling operations, and, in fact, it is so bad -- (Applause.)
-- that the solution they're talking about is, besides trying to force through simply a dilution method of treatment, is, All right, let's inject it into the ground and let's try to safely harbor it away from everybody else. Well, there are two 300 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 problems with that. First off, if you inject this contaminated water into the ground, as Dr. Boufadel had said, I mean, there is always the worry that it will break free. And this is very seriously toxic, contaminated water. And so if we don't do the right analysis, it may break free. But even if it doesn't, the loss of that fresh water that they've now contaminated with toxins is significant and meaningful. We can't afford, our river can't afford, our communities can't afford, our earth can't afford the loss of that fresh water. And we're talking about millions upon millions of gallons of fresh water over time being lost and harbored away underground, never to be seen from again. We have a limited supply of fresh water in this region, in this world. We can't give it to the gas drillers to toxify and steal from us. (Applause.)
/ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 back on point -- I had to speak to Dr. Martin's points. But as you also heard earlier from the Philadelphia Water Department, they are investing very heavily in watershed protection and restoration and, in fact, have already invested, I think, $25 million was the figure that we heard. Well, allowing the gas drilling to go forward is going to be totally counterproductive for the City of Philadelphia, because while Philadelphia is working so hard investing $25 million in restoring the watersheds that provide it clean, fresh drinking water, the gas drillers are going to be destroying that very same land and very same water source. So we're undermining the efforts and the investments of the City of Philadelphia if gas drilling is allowed to move forward. S. foreign oil. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 nonsense. We did hear -- we heard some claims that all this gas is going to come directly to Philadelphia. Well, the one distributor acknowledged that that's not in fact true. There's no guarantee that it's going to come here. But we also know, and we know for a fact, that much of the gas to be extracted from the Marcellus Shale in the Upper Delaware is already planned for shipment overseas to places like China, Japan, Norway, France and India. S. So it's not weaning us off of anything. It's giving the gas drillers more profits as they ship it off, and we're still dependent on the fossil fuel sources. In terms of global climate change, people did speak to that, so I won't speak to that, except for the summary statement that the gas drilling, when you look at it from cradle to grave, is not going to make global climate change better. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the truck traffic and the dirty diesel fuel that they'll be using for the 1,400 truck trips that have to happen for every single one of these 10,000 to 50,000 wells, and the loss of trees. Now, though, really to speak directly to the point of the economic ramifications for Philadelphia and for the region from gas drilling, there are many. Destroying the health of the river is going to drive business away from Philadelphia. That's one of our biggest concerns. Businesses increasingly look to settle, particularly their headquarter operations, to settle in beautiful areas that are attractive, that are well renowned, like Philadelphia. If we lose the river, we lose the cache of a healthy river, then we're going to drive this big business away. We also are going to be putting directly in jeopardy jobs, eco-tourism and recreation and river-related jobs. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Riverkeeper Network titled "River Values" that lays all of this out in great detail, but I want to highlight a few of those economic jobs that are going to be harmed. In just one year, the upper reaches of the Delaware River brought to local communities over 367,000 white water paddlers who spent over $20 million, contributed almost $10 million to our local economies and supported 447 jobs. There are canoe liveries 15 that operate along the Delaware River. 16 Some of them employ as many as 200 17 people. Some of them have an attendance 18 of 60,000 or more in a given year. That 19 means that one livery alone can create 20 gross revenue of more than $3 million a year for our region. One canoe livery alone. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 they would be today -- resulted in over and a half million dollars in local 4 business revenue. This revenue supported 5 348 jobs. It provided over three and a 6 half million dollars in wages and over 7 $719,000 in local taxes. And that 8 investment translated into almost $30 9 million in local economic activities. 10 River festivals up and down the 11 river, because the river is so clean and 12 beautiful and healthy, a lot of 13 communities celebrate it, including 14 Philadelphia. Lambertville's shad fest, 15 by example, draws 30,000 to 35,000 people 16 to that community for one brief weekend 17 to celebrate our clean and healthy Delaware River.
That generates a tremendous amount of business for that community. Just a few weeks ago Philadelphia had another river-focused festival on the bank of the Delaware River. That brought income. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 restaurants and hotels that market themselves in terms of their relation to the river, and actually some hotels charge over $100 more for a room if it faces the river than if it doesn't. And then, of course, we've got lots of boating along the Schuylkill and lots of boating along the Delaware, rowing, paddling, motorized boats. The Schuylkill has hosted over regattas in 12 a single year, some of them bringing as 13 many as 5,000 visitors from all over the 14 country to enjoy Philadelphia and our 15 beautiful, clean rivers. 16 And this nonsense that the 17 Schuylkill is not going to be fracked, 18 you know, the Marcellus Shale is there, 19 the drillers will be coming. But both 20 the Schuylkill and the Delaware are at risk from the drilling, and so is their boating and their fishing, which, of course, is very, very common along both rivers. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 restoration of the Delaware River and all the work that goes into accomplishing that isn't just important in terms of these local economies and these jobs, but it's also directly important in terms of the health and safety of our communities, because the woodlands and the forests that are in the upper waters -- in the headwaters of the Delaware protect us from flooding and flood damages. And we have communities already along the Delaware River that suffer from catastrophic flooding, and if we further remove the vegetation and deforest the Upper Delaware in order to accommodate natural gas drilling, we're putting these communities downstream at tremendous risk from increased flood damages. And who has to pay when we have to help them rebuild and restore and clean up? Everybody in the region. We pay for it through our tax dollars and through our hearts, because it's very hard to witness that when it happens year after year. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
I will. We have to talk about the drinking water, though, and we have to say that both Philadelphia and New York City understand that to best protect your drinking water, you best protect the source. And experience has shown that for every dollar you invest in watershed protection, you get $7.50 up to $200 of economic savings in the form of not having to put in new infrastructure and water treatment. And, in fact, New York City has invested $1 to $1.5 billion in protecting the Upper Delaware in order to save itself $10 to $20 billion. So I will say in conclusion that the one thing that you heard from the Basin Commission today is, Carol Collier talked about the Special Protection Waters regulation, and I will tell you those regulations were created and put in place because of petitions by 309 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. They finally put them in place. They're now doing us great good when it comes to natural gas drilling. She talked about the money coming for the environmental analysis. She talked about the creation of gas drilling-specific regulations, but the thing that she mentioned that I think gets lost a little bit in the noise, because of the political pressure, particularly from Governor Rendell, the Basin Commission is not going to wait for the outcome of the cumulative environmental assessment before doing their regulations. They're going to do it backwards. They're rushing through regulations. There's a lot of political pressure on the staff to make the regulations that are being drafted weaker than what would have come out. And once those regulations get out the door, the drilling happens. And that cumulative environmental assessment and analysis 310 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that's going to be completed over the course of the next one, two, three years is going to be useless, because the damage will be done. So we really need the City of Philadelphia to stand up, stand strong and stand not just in support of the Basin Commission doing it the right way, doing the environmental analysis, then the regulations, but we need the City of Philadelphia to be reaching into Harrisburg, telling Governor Rendell and all of those legislators that they need to stand with Philadelphia to defend our drinking water supply, not with the drillers to damage it. Thank you. (Applause.)
I heard a lot of testimony today, but that last part, the cart before the horse part, is resonating for me.
/ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 I am the last one, and what I prepared is kind of, in a sense, a conclusion for a very interesting day. But I want to make two points of correction. The first point is, when the representative from the PADEC was here, he said we began to get permits for the Marcellus in 2005. I have a friend who says there's no such thing as a coincidence. Like I am here in the town where I was born. Here I am again. And 2005 was the year the energy bill was passed that allowed for gas drilling in this high-impact hydraulic fashion to be exempt from the Clean Water Air, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Drinking Water Act. That's the same year that they applied for permits in the Marcellus. That's one thing. The second thing that was said is that a well would produce 30 years of natural gas. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 order to have a lot of output, you have to drill lots of wells. I mean, tens of thousands, if not more, wells. This is from Chesapeake. I just witnessed a presentation from the New York lobbyist from Chesapeake, and for some reason, this chart is no longer in their presentation. So I will leave this with you and then I'll go to my prepared remarks, but I want to thank you, Councilman Jones, for doing this and for Councilwoman Blondell for doing this and for being so patient through all the testimony and all these hours, and I am so happy that you scheduled me and I'm so happy that I came and that I heard everybody, and I will be back more than I ever thought I would be in Philadelphia. I'm here today representing NYH20, which is a New York advocacy group for clean drinking water. I was born in Philadelphia. I now live in New York. I do not own a house in either rural Pennsylvania or upstate New York. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the prospect of drilling in the Delaware basin with high-impact hydro-fracturing doubly pains me because of Philadelphia, where I came from, and New York is where I now live. I read an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune, and I quote one sentence, "Residents and municipal officials are trying to balance the benefits of money and jobs with the right to clean water and air. " How can we possibly live and thrive without clean water and air? This is our most basic right, more basic than our right to vote, more basic than democracy, more basic than our economic system. It is the most basic service we ask our government to protect, is the right to live healthy, productive lives. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 money goes to the energy companies. It does not benefit the states, because there'll be increased healthcare costs, infrastructure repairs, new water treatment plants, all of which may cost billions of dollars. As for jobs, the high-paid welders and riggers come from out of state. There will be some jobs for vendors to service those high-paying jobs, but all this will approximately last five years per well site, but the polluted water and air will remain for generations. We are in a battle. The 20th century fossil fuel industry is reluctant to assume its smaller role in the 21st century. Green energy is knocking at the door. Exploration for black energy has become expensive and dangerous, because there is no easy way available anymore. We have witnessed the worst spill in history just this past summer. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 have been spills, fires and a dangerous blowout of a rig in early June. Many communities have seen their real estate values plunge, because who will buy in a community with questionable aquifers. Now the birth place of our nation, born in the age of enlightenment, may succumb because of the threat to its water supply from hydraulic fracking in the Delaware River Basin. I submit to you -- and I'm not going through the whole article -- there was an article in the New York Times this past Sunday in their series called Beyond Fossil Fuels. It is an article about homes that can be built with no need of a furnace even in cold climates.
Quote, "America's drafty building methods amount for as much as 40 percent of its primary energy use, 70 percent of its electricity consumption and 40 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 black energy technology, because we do not need the increased capacity of black energy. We certainly do not need to use it if it will foul our water supply of this great city. " So I left the article with you. You will see that this means jobs that will last forever, jobs that can be made now. They are doing this construction of these homes in Europe and there are only 13 here, but we do have the green jobs. They're available now. It's up to our government to let them spring and prosper and flourish, and these will be jobs for generations. And thank you very much for doing this. )
I wanted to say that we as Councilpeople often deal with constituent groups, none with such patience, none with such endurance and none with such passion as I've heard today. 317 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 If my colleague Marian Tasco were here, she would say act in haste and repent in your leisure. Act in haste and repent in your leisure. If nothing else, we've learned that we need to slow down, take a hard look at what we are about to enter, because the ramifications can last a hundred years. So what we are going to do is take what we've learned today, digest it and produce a report with recommendations. My colleagues and I are going to take seriously and look at a resolution that may call for two things. One, that the Governor consider the moratorium until at least after the study. And in my capacity as a Philadelphia Gas Commissioner, I want to present a resolution calling for the moratorium of non-use of Marcellus Shale drilled gas to stop the fracturing at all costs. (Applause.)
And with 318 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that, this Committee is recessed to the call of the Chair. Thank you for your patience. (Applause.) (Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment concluded at 3:55 p.m.) - - - 319 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on September 28, 2010, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. -------------------- MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)